Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 May 1803
CountryUnited States of America
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.
The multitude of false churches accredits the true religion.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.
The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.
Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.
Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.
Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.
Where dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay atall. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret which perplexes them, and puts them out.
Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.
Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.
Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: lends her all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.
Religion must always be a crab fruit; it cannot be grafted, and keep its wild beauty.