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 Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code. Ralph Waldo Emerson fashion honor men The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be nothing," and "The worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life. Ralph Waldo Emerson blessed philosophy way A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation. Ralph Waldo Emerson heels reformation reform The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments. Ralph Waldo Emerson employment imagination ideas Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit. Ralph Waldo Emerson darkness evil class It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration. Ralph Waldo Emerson reform improvement evil The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. Ralph Waldo Emerson innovation hate dwelling To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply that the majority are unripe, andhave not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion. Ralph Waldo Emerson wicked heart mean The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee. Ralph Waldo Emerson chimpanzees mass animal In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Ralph Waldo Emerson hilarity rose joy As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson inspiration men thinking Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist. Ralph Waldo Emerson idealism idealist Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes. Ralph Waldo Emerson ceremony society conversation If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air. Ralph Waldo Emerson eye air rain 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 society self men I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? Ralph Waldo Emerson rome paris doe When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. Ralph Waldo Emerson kings views men We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlars. Ralph Waldo Emerson debt genius sitting Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof? Ralph Waldo Emerson students all-things men But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson consistency trying world
