On Reading Ralph

  It seems so strange to me that these words impact me so .

A similar experience it must be to see a sound ,

taste a sight ,

smell a touch,

Ringing bells within me .

How strange that words on paper can so effect.

That ideas that are so whole,

so unified and complimentary ,

can be communicated using that which is fragmented ,

limited , and imprisoned upon a page of paper like words are .

Truly it is like strolling through a forest of Redwood trees.

I'm amazed at their height and straightness,

The tops being invisible from my where I view on the Earth below.

I see them pointing to Heaven itself .

And I am awed,

feeling blessed to have taken the stroll through this forest of truth .

Blessed that I am the reader,

and giving thanks to the writer,

for providing the space of his life to plant the seeds of  these towering truths.

Barry Anthony

The House Of Emerson

Quotes From his Essays and other writings

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character makes an overpowering present ;

A cheerful determined hour , which fortifies all the company ,

by making them see that which is possible and excellent

 that was not thought of .

A man ,' said Oliver Cromwell " never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going "

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm .

... that which is made instructs how to make better .

...they renounce aspiration ,accept the actual for the necessary .

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love .

No truth so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow

in the light of new thoughts .

Let them become organs of the Holy Ghost ; let them be lovers ; let them behold Truth ; and their eyes are uplifted , their wrinkles smoothed , they are perfumed again with hope and power .

Your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest of men .

I am not careful to justify myself... but lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my own whims , let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter . Do not set the least value on what I do or the least discredit on what I do not , as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false . I unsettle all things . No facts are to me sacred , none are profane . I simply experiment , an endless seeker with no past at my back .

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery ,

so that a man cannot have his flank turned ,

cannot be out generalled ,but put him where you will

he stands .

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet .

Then all things are at risk .  

...all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness

executing and organizing itself .

The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer . If they were at one on any part no words would be necessary thereon.

A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages he goes to sleep . When he is pushed , tormented , defeated , he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits , on his manhood , he has gained facts , learns his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit ; has got moderation and real skill.....

The key to every man is his thought .

Sturdy and defying though he look ,

he has a helm which he obeys ,

which is the idea after which all his facts are classified .

He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

That which builds is better than that which is built . The hand that built can topple it down much faster .

Everything looks permanent until it's secret is known .

Permanence is but a word of degrees .

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth .

Has a man gained anything who has received a hundred favors

and rendered none?

He is great who confers the most benefit .

Benefit is the end of nature .

Do the thing and you shall have the power .

Things are arranged for truth and benefit .

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

In the thought of tomorrow there is power to upheave all thy creeds , all the creeds , all the literature of the nations and marshall thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted .

...every man believes he has greater possibilities .

Men walk as prophesies of the next age .  

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends .

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations .

The only sin is limitation .

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar ,

but is a stab at the health of human society .

The best good of wealth is freedom .

The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin .

The drover , the sailor buffets it all day and his health renews itself

as vigorous a pulse under the sleet

as under the sun of June .

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live .

In skating over thin ice

our safety is in our speed .

...he that loveth maketh the grandeur he loves .

The changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men

are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth .

...we are idolators of the old .

To fill the hour - that is happiness ;

To fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval .

It is a main lesson of wisdom

to know your own from others .  

They wish to be saved from the mischief of their vices ,

but not from their vices .

Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms .

A wise and hardy physician will say

" Come out of that !! " , as a first condition of his advice .

I gossip for my hour of the eternal politics .

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life and urge doing . I am content with knowing , if only I could know... to know a little , would be worth the expense of this world .

Patience and patience ,

we shall win at last .

We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time .

It takes a good deal of time to eat

or to sleep , or to earn a hundred dollars ,

and very little time to entertain a hope and an insight

which becomes the light of our life .

Never mind the ridicule ,

Never mind the defeat :

Up again old heart ! it seems to say , -

there is victory yet for all justice ;

and the true romance which the world exists to realize ,

will be the transformation of genius

into practical power .

I went from being annoyed or dismayed with the sounds

of screaming babies and yelping dogs

to a gladness that I could hear anything at all .  

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin it's friend , and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years .

High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me

to new and noble depths and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts .

A man who stands united with his thought

conceives magnificently of himself .

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man .

There comes a time when one arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;

that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion.

Art is the path of the creator to his work, not the finished work itself.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light

that flashes across his mind from within

more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.

Not for nothing one face

one character, one fact makes much impression on him,

and another none.

Trust thyself;

every heart vibrates to that iron string .

And we are now men,

and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny;

and not minors or invalids in a protected corner,

not cowards fleeing before a revolution,

but guides, redeemers, and benefactors,

obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on chaos and the dark.

The virtue in most request is conformity...

it loves not realities and creators,

but names and customs .

Nothing is at last sacred

but the integrity of your own mind .                                                         

No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature .

If I know your sect I anticipate your argument .

For non conformity the world whips you with it's displeasure .

And therefor a man must learn how to estimate a sour face.

... but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,

but are put on and off as the wind blows,

and a newspaper directs.

It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on memory alone...

but to bring the past for  judgment into the thousand eyed present,

and live ever in a new day.

A foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds...

The voyage of the best ship

is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

Greatness appeals to the future.

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity

and the squalid contentment of the times

and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office,

the fact which is the upshot of all history,

that their is a great responsible thinker and actor working wherever a man works;

that a true man belongs to no other time or place,

but is the center of things.

We live in the lap of  immense intelligence,

which makes us receivers of a truth

and organs of it's activity.

Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind,

and his involuntary perceptions,

and knows that to his involuntary perceptions

a perfect faith is due.

...history is an impertinence and an injury,

if it be anymore than a cheerful apolouge or parable

of my being and becoming . 

... for all that we say is the far off remembering of the intuition .

It is easy to see that a greater self reliance must work a revolution

in all the offices and relations of men.

In their religion; in their education; in their pursuits;

their modes of living; their association; in their property;

in their speculative views.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life

from the highest point of view.

If we filled the day with bravery,

we would not