Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.
Interpretation
This quote questions the reverence for past traditions and beliefs, suggesting they can undermine personal authority and clarity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in this quote critiques the tendency to idolize the past, implying that such veneration can lead to a loss of personal sanity and undermine oneβs inner authority. He suggests that the weight of historical precedents can cloud judgment and obstruct genuine self-awareness, thus challenging individuals to seek their own truths rather than adhere blindly to what has been established.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of personal beliefs versus societal expectations.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.
We have not faith, we have not patience to see this. We trust the man in the street; but there is one being in the universe we never trust and that is God. We trust Him when He works just our way. But the time will come when, getting blow after blow, the self - sufficient mind will die. In everything we do, the serpent ego is rising up. We are glad that there are so many thorns on the path. They strike the hood of the cobra.
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.
Jesus Christ does not save the worthy, but the unworthy. Your plea must not be righteousness but guilt
America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.
What agent is there other than the Creator of the heavens and earth who can know whatever occurs in our heart, down to its most subtle and secret thoughts, and illuminate the future for us by establishing the Hereafter, saving us from the countless suffocating waves of the world?
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