Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
American philosopher, essayist, and poet.
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.
Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.
A mollusk is a cheap edition [of man] with a suppression of the costlier illustrations, designed for dingy circulation, for shelving in an oyster-bank or among the seaweed.
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.
The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine Ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
To live without duties is obscene.
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
United States! the ages plead, —
Present and Past in under-song, —
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior; and in that I can learn of him.
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.
Music is the poor man's Parnassus.