Quote

The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Men
Wealth
Lest
Commonplaces
Love
Leave
Undone
Rekindle
People
Rich
Commonplace
Denouncing
Word
Thirst
Moralists
Power
Rush
Moralist
Take
Presses
Aiming
Many
Press
Pulpit
Would
Civilization
Hazards

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,--do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your mind than your brother or your child.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
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Every man is as lazy as he dares to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The teaching of politics is that the Government, which was set for protection and comfort of all good citizens, becomes the principal obstruction and nuisance with which we have to contend... The cheat and bully and malefactor we meet everywhere is the Government.
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The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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First be a good animal.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All men are poets at heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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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.
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Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat.
Ralph Waldo Emerson