Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature (1836)

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Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: lends her all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth: they had as lief hear that their friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can never do anything for humanity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
For the existing world is not a dream, and cannot with impunity be treated as a dream; neither is it a disease; but it is the ground on which you stand, it is the mother of whom you were born.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man on trial. The man of principle is known as such, and even in the fury of faction is respected.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion,not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The time is coming when all men will see that the gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, buta sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, and these must.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is this domineering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science..

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of thehuman mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstacy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature has her own best mode of doing each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own way to hers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
My good hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I have less lust to bite my enemies. In the smoothing the rough hillocks, I smooth my temper.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Moon, planet, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the elements, whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become big masters.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson