Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inappropriate place to quote it, and inappropriate beneficiaries to suggest as its object.

He's the best ever.

Anglo-Saxon Protestant Dissenter. Unitarian. Probably the most admirable, most desirable to emulate people there ever was.

Imagine if ever human thought this way.The world would be in paradise.

If the place which produced the majority of those who actually did think this way was declared the enemy of humankind, then how sincere is this wish?

Lived in Massachusetts all my life. Emerson, Thoreau and A. Bronson Alcott are the local hero's our progressive outlook comes from.

other Emerson quotes:
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

You become what you think about all day long.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Do the Irish who monopolized Boston think that way? It means something else when quoted by a different mouth.

I said every human, so no one would be a enemy.Your play on word it tiring.Try to make more sense of your delusion.

I am saying that I have yet to encounter a person here who acted as if they sincerely thought like Mr. Emerson. I've read his works and greatly admired them, especially the 'American Scholar.' If you can say in good conscience that this is the operating philosophy of THIS PLACE then you are a far better liar than I ever could be.

So your saying the people here on this forum cant and will not support this kind on thinking?

Worse. I'm saying that they will hide behind it while operating in the same way they always have. Between Emerson and his Puritan forefathers, I can see a direct, logical, intelligible line of descent in every way. Here I see people quoting him, while acting in a way consistent with someone from Sicily or Sardinia. This debases the philosophy. But then, how could a mobster shame me? So they use quotes of genuinely good people while employing tactics of genuinely bad ones. All of humanity doesn't think or operate that way, because all of humanity doesn't have that descent. And when they encounter it, I find it is either as 'enemy' or 'sucker.' Why should I go to bat for a creature who lives like that, simply because they are afraid for them and theirs?

Forgive if you will. Not different mouth. Different teanga, (Tongue).

As a by the way as I like American poetry but I thought Yeats as I read OP.

And Yeats was Northern Irish, not Irish. Mayor 'Hizonner' Daly is Irish, and representative of the lot. Different mouth/tongue, different meaning.

Yes I would say the Irish became a little less oriented towards FATE and DESTINY by being exposed to the philosophy of Emerson. That's why they went and married Italians and Polish Catholics and learned to scream and yell for almost no reason.

You are obviously a racist Nazi.DEsCENT is ALL OFF HUMANITY, ALL PEOPLE..you have now clue what the quote means..

So they married their fellow Catholics. How open-minded of them. What did they learn from their history? The victims of the Black and Tans went on to become one of the most vicious and crooked police forces known to humankind. The victims of the land distribution between them and the Orangemen went on to create some of the most racially-segregated cities in the country. I studied civil rights struggles, looking for people who lived what they said. And what I found was that the real desire was to get their own back, and the form the power they desired took was exactly that of those abuses of which they complained. The Anglo-Saxon Protestants alone lived up to their word, and I hear them mocked in every quarter, but quoted excessively when it makes for a good front. The disaster that is coming is simply reality catching up with the facade. Why, with all the talk of 'cause and effect,' should I prevent people who have done wrong to others from suffering the logical and therefore just consequences of that?

Meanwhile i remember when i was like 22 and went into a 7-11 and got to the counter and saw money laying in the racks of stuff below the counter.i picked it up and i was 2 100 dollar bills.I ask the cashier if anyone had ask about losing money..he pointed to a women crying at the back of the store.

No, not at all. Descent as in the heritage you are steeped in--your NEIGHBORS and their BEHAVIOR--what is taught as admirable by THE GROUP and what is looked down upon. The key phrase I used was 'Protestant Dissenter.' The people who invented civil rights, who freed the slaves, who fought their own kin to ensure what were formerly creedal statements became reality. There were plenty of other people who came from the same place who didn't. And plenty of other peoples who have intelligence and history as reasons enough to truly embrace this line of thinking and yet don't.

Born on the island of Ireland under Brutish rule made him British. As lord Wellington once said. Because one is born in a stable does not make him a horse.

By that definition then Parnell was Irish. He certainly wasn't treated like it the second they got the chance.

Their fellow Catholics followed the "right religion" of course, but already the Irish were seeking new DNA to help with their many congenital diseases including a sharp jaw and square nose.

The Anglosaxon English bastards were guilty of the fire massacre in the Kingston RI swamp. That some small enlightenment happened for a short time in some small New England towns is just what happens sometimes on earth, and we remember. These ones left writings behind. Emerson didn't support the hypocrites of society regardless of race. Then Walt Whitman happened. Whitman and Lucretius On The Nature Of Things basically sums up the modern human.

Protestant Dissenter,Descent,Heritage..All speak of singling out a certain people.This quote has nothing to do with that.Its about helping other people..

The persecuted Irish became the NYPD and its Chicago cousins. Their persecutors, the Scots-Irish, became the Klan. Without the Protestant belief system, an Emerson never would have existed. The Catholic exists as the Protestants mortal enemy. Every liberal belief system in America that doesn't involve an aristocratic, birth-dependent overclass comes from Protestants as CREED. Once that is gone, then all we have is people aping them. Ethnic whites may be able to quote them, but they have neither the history nor the cultural heritage to back it up. Look at Caddyshack, or Back to School, or any of the other send-ups of the self-same culture. What does it mean? Even the Js, when given the chance of adopting the matrix of cultural values which led to the politics they claimed to endorse, or holding a cultural grudge for not being allowed into country clubs and ivy league colleges, chose the latter. Enough talk of ego, and universalism. It all goes back to blood and loyalty to ancestors, which means revenge. I tried to thread the needle. I tried to be good. It failed, and it was sabotaged by people who for the life of them cannot and will not ever have a conscience about such things.

I agree, Emerson is a realtive on my mom's side.




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Helping other people? Come on, admit that there are difference between cultures. If Lodge had won, the Civil Rights Act would have passed. The only way it got passed under Kennedy was literally over his dead body. One is Protestant and the other Catholic. Both have reputations, and one has one I can trust. Why treat them equally when only one has a reputation for reciprocating that? History is indelible, and this site has proven that irrevocably. Why argue out of both sides of your mouth?

What did you do? "I tried to thread the needle. I tried to be good. It failed"

Very nice.

'Imagine if ever human thought this way.The world would be in paradise.'.. Do you know what Imagine means?

Being a member of an ethnic group or even a family in good standing inevitably means hiding bodies. I tried to be above that and hold to standards independent of 'the ties that bind.' I saw people suddenly become vicious, and not even established laws stood in the way of them getting back at me. As a result I never escaped my family, even while the definition of family shrank to nothing more than 'the people to whom you are related to by blood.' If they didn't want to die on that hill, then they ought to have showed some scruples.

It means 'pretend.' On the one hand, I am told 'welcome to the real world' and 'it's a jungle out there,' while on the other, I am asked to think like a child. Cognitive dissonance, indeed.