The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive. Ralph Waldo Emerson More Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson More Quotes From Ralph Waldo Emerson An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson eye perfection action There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly. Ralph Waldo Emerson presence-of-mind light men Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. Ralph Waldo Emerson fate freedom men We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. Ralph Waldo Emerson catholic humanity two The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end. Ralph Waldo Emerson circles self men Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause. Ralph Waldo Emerson fleeting men looks 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 god country past Sole and self-commanded works, Ralph Waldo Emerson ice flames self With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house. Ralph Waldo Emerson air house inspire Silent rushes the swift Lord Ralph Waldo Emerson apples eden god Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance,--what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Ralph Waldo Emerson moments life-is long The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritualcreation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest. Ralph Waldo Emerson money animal men Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. Ralph Waldo Emerson iron freedom law The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure. Ralph Waldo Emerson money soul law If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of hisown comfort,--who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them. Ralph Waldo Emerson ice-cream men thinking If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it. Ralph Waldo Emerson church-bells sound blood The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent. Ralph Waldo Emerson slavery men dull It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears. Ralph Waldo Emerson eye race islands Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master. Ralph Waldo Emerson humility religious giving Beside all the small reasons we assign, there is a great reason for the existence of every extant fact; a reason which lies grandand immovable, often unsuspected behind it in silence. Ralph Waldo Emerson silence lying facts
