Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn 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 EmersonTo the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone gave reason.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.
Ralph Waldo Emerson