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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Browse 12 quotes about Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

“Life," said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night. But I don’t ask to go back to America, to be put in a double harness again, to work the treadmill. No, I prefer to be a poor man of Europe. God knows, I am poor enough; it only remains to be a man.”

ThinkingLifeAmericaPovertyFoodPoor ManEmersonHenry MillerRalph Waldo Emerson
Author:Henry Miller
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“In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. Every variety of power was in this orator, -- logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy. The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to Thomas Paine of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from Paine's pen to Ingersoll's tongue. The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos. {Conway's thoughts on the great Robert Ingersoll}”

LoveInspirationalArtReasonWisdomHumorTruthPoetryVoiceFriendshipImaginationEmotionPowerTearsHonorMoralitySpeechLaughterRespectLogicPraiseSimplicityMemorableAdmirationSympathyBostonMirthPathosPaineLectureIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green IngersollEmersonOratorThomas PaineThoreauRalph Waldo EmersonHenry David ThoreauRalph EmersonHenry D ThoreauHenry ThoreauRalph E EmersonSome Mistakes Of Moses
Book:My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East
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“There was something else amusing about the house: the irony that the most important battle of the American Revolution--the shoot-out at the Old North Bridge--had taken place just outside the residence of the pacifist Ralph Waldo Emerson. True, Emerson was born after the battle in 1803, but his grandfather had been living in the house at the time of the Revolution, and the juxtaposition of such pacifism against such violence struck Paul as a symbol of an eternal truth about American history: Nixon, that goofy Vietnam War mortician, was right: the silent majority ruled (not the rebellious, pacifist fringe); the majority killed for their property; and there was nothing really revolutionary about the minutemen , who won a war and took over the entire country to ultimately build fast-food restaurants and Disneyland while abolitionists, pacifists, hippies, and environmentalists were left to make well-intended flatulent noises--to write poems such as Ginsberg's "Howl"--in books for other defeated noisemakers.”

Fast FoodDisneylandPacifismRalph Waldo EmersonConcordShot Heard Around The World
Book:Blind Speed
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