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The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.

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
Virtue
Presence
Homely
Law
Details
Perceives
Games
Delight
Sentiment
Certain
Laws
Covers
Seems
Seem
Sentiments
Play
Divine
Reverence
Life
Principles
Perceive
Game
Foolish
Astonish

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It is with a good book as it is with good company.
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I see my trees repair their boughs.
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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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Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.
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Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.
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But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
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Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
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How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.
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A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.
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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.
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Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest.
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We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
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What the tender and poetic youth dreams to-day, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is to-morrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the character of nations.
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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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If with love thy heart has burned If thy love is unreturned Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed.
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The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all material. He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power.
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The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
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All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.
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Each age, it is found, must write its own books or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson