Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Emerson quotes

"Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition."

"There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact."

"Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever."

"The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself ... The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives."

"All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of rabbits, rabbits."

"The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth."

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

"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth."

"To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature."

"Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts."

"The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences."

"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts."

"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching."

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet."

"Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in."

"Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them."

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