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Religion Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

184 Religion quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Religion quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s page

Good churches need good people, and the quotes point out that imagination fuels most religions. They claim that feeling well‑dressed can bring tranquility that religion alone cannot give, and that society often picks a faith for us. The words also suggest that meeting God can happen through caring for others.

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The religions we call false were once true.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In the woods we return to reason and faith.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The poem is a confession of faith.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Genius is religious.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Faith makes us, and not we it; and faith makes its own forms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I like the silence of a church, before the service begins better than any preaching.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Spiritual force is stronger than material force; thoughts rule the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Go into one of our cool churches, and begin to count the words that might be spared, and in most places the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen but society has chosen for us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals. Strength enters just as much as the moral element prevails.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength.…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Let the man stand on his feet. Let religion cease to be occasional; and the pulses of thought that go to the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's chapel…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. . . . Every influx of atheism, of skepticism, is…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics,…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity i am bought and sold; for them i will go…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The multitude of false churches accredits the true religion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“FOR EVERY STOIC WAS A STOIC BUT WHERE IN CHRISTENDOM IS THE CHRISTIAN?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

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If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular…

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If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the…

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A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his…

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Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The order of things consents to virtue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am; therefore, I had nothing better to do than to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson