Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

If you want to possess things—money; if you want to possess yourself—meditation. And if you possess yourself, money loses all meaning.

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

The Spirit power begins in directing the Animal power to other than egoistic ends.

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

It is belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found capital safely invested and richly productive of interest, although I have sometimes made but a bad use of it.

Silence of the heart is necessary so you can hear God everywhere - in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, in the animals.

Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.

I maintain that we ought to abolish the institution and stop causing or facilitating the existence of more 'companion' animals.

The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.

Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.

I believe that correct principles are natural laws, and that God, the Creator and Father of us all, is the source of them, and also the source of our conscience. I believe that to the degree people live by this inspired conscience, they will grow to fulfill their natures; to the degree that they do not, they will not rise above the animal plane.

Your history is animal. Your future is divinity. Right now, you are like a pendulum, swinging between the two.

Our animal friends’ non-reactive and forgiving natures can teach us positive spiritual lessons on a daily basis.

Let us rise above the things that pass away. Up above, the air is so pure. Jesus can hide Himself but we will find Him there.

He whose intellect overcomes his lust is higher than the angels; he whose lust overcomes his intelligence is less than an animal.

The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful.

This was the very purpose of creation that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal 'idea' in God, should 'become' God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.

There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul.

Only passions can raise a man above the level of the animal.

Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood

The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.

I didn't need more fame or money. I needed more heart.

Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory.

The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.