Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Humanity
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None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.
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We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.
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A man is a god in ruins.
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Success treads on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.
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There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
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We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
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There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing.
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We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
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O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.
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The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
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A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
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The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.