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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Philosopher
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Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
From Nature and Selected Essays
the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
From The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative man.
From Self-Reliance and Other Essays
I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live them from the devil.
From Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
From Self Reliance
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.
Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.
This outlook, one that said that American history must be the history of nature speaking through men, not of men shaping nature, became the single most powerful force in American intellectual life in the nineteenth century and shaped some of America's greatest works of literature, such as Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass and Walden, as well as generating an American school of philosophy , to be furthered by William James and John Dewey.
From Nature and Other Essays
You become what you think about all day long.
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.
Emerson's own best insight into fame is in his essay on Character. "The most dismaying aspect of fame from the point of view of its possessor is not just that fame is generally disproportionate to actual achievement, but that the fame that we first assume to be a reward for work well done becomes instead an impossible promise of about future work. Fame casts an anticipatory chill over current efforts because it awakens expectations that can never fully be met".
From Character
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.
From Essays
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
From Nature and Selected Essays
the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
From The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative man.
From Self-Reliance and Other Essays
I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live them from the devil.
From Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
From Self Reliance
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.
Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.
This outlook, one that said that American history must be the history of nature speaking through men, not of men shaping nature, became the single most powerful force in American intellectual life in the nineteenth century and shaped some of America's greatest works of literature, such as Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass and Walden, as well as generating an American school of philosophy , to be furthered by William James and John Dewey.
From Nature and Other Essays
You become what you think about all day long.
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.
Emerson's own best insight into fame is in his essay on Character. "The most dismaying aspect of fame from the point of view of its possessor is not just that fame is generally disproportionate to actual achievement, but that the fame that we first assume to be a reward for work well done becomes instead an impossible promise of about future work. Fame casts an anticipatory chill over current efforts because it awakens expectations that can never fully be met".
From Character
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.
From Essays
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
From Nature and Selected Essays
the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
From The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative man.
From Self-Reliance and Other Essays
I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live them from the devil.
From Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
From Self Reliance
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.
Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.
This outlook, one that said that American history must be the history of nature speaking through men, not of men shaping nature, became the single most powerful force in American intellectual life in the nineteenth century and shaped some of America's greatest works of literature, such as Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass and Walden, as well as generating an American school of philosophy , to be furthered by William James and John Dewey.
From Nature and Other Essays
You become what you think about all day long.
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.
Emerson's own best insight into fame is in his essay on Character. "The most dismaying aspect of fame from the point of view of its possessor is not just that fame is generally disproportionate to actual achievement, but that the fame that we first assume to be a reward for work well done becomes instead an impossible promise of about future work. Fame casts an anticipatory chill over current efforts because it awakens expectations that can never fully be met".
From Character
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.
From Essays
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
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