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 Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson office teaching sky We must leave our pets at home, when we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson pet home men There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them. Ralph Waldo Emerson progress events appearance In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present. Ralph Waldo Emerson good-company consciousness soul A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. Ralph Waldo Emerson attitude men reality Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped. Ralph Waldo Emerson literature religious running Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary strength and concentration to men, and seems to be much used in Nature for fabrics in which local and spasmodic energy is required. Ralph Waldo Emerson fabric giving men The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from. Ralph Waldo Emerson inventor invention doe These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power. Ralph Waldo Emerson power ease art Be a gift and a benediction. Ralph Waldo Emerson benediction Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. Ralph Waldo Emerson cities found want New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence. Ralph Waldo Emerson orange personality new-york The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness. Ralph Waldo Emerson country children art In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose. Ralph Waldo Emerson cities men people If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. Ralph Waldo Emerson circles europe blood Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age. Ralph Waldo Emerson growth age men This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Ralph Waldo Emerson hate past jesus Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received. Ralph Waldo Emerson benefits evil kindness How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or mother's life? Ralph Waldo Emerson mother men father Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Ralph Waldo Emerson envy romance romantic
