Quote

Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.

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
May
Pretension
Back
Authenticity
Real
Slavery
Never
Wrote
World
Greatness
Cannot
Feigned
Stills
Iliad
Still
Abolished

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The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
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Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
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The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.
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Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
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In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.
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We live by our imagination, our admirations, and our sentiments.
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You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.
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The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.
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Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.
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People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
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In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.
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The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent.
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The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.
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Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.
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Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned much is to say on both sides,and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.
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