Monday, September 26, 2011

Monday Morning Quotes ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted
whenever I am contradicted.”

“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.”

“If a man fasten his attention of a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.”

“Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.”

“Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.”

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your
private heart, is true for all men -- that is genius.... Whoso would be a man
must be a nonconformist.... What I must do, is all that concerns me; not
what the people think.... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing,
but the triumph of principles.”

“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul.”

“The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false
impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the
falling rain.”

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”

“The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

“Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”

“The faith that stands on authority is not faith.”  


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