Emerson Compensation Quotes

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that no person can help another without helping themselves

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul

Ralph Waldo Emerson explains, "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst...They are for nothing but to inspire.

The law of nature is: Do the thing, and you shall have the power, but they who do not the thing have not the power.

It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

Books are the best type of influence of the past...Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, - to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.

Do the thing, and you shall have the power.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay on Compensation

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, ⎯ is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?

For everything you have missed you have gained something else, and for everything you gain you lose something else.

Bir tehdit karşısında tazelenen insanlar vardır. Tutum ve tasarruf melekelerini değil; anlayış, sabitlik, özveriye hazır olma gibi özellikleri şart koşarak, çoğunluğu korkutan ve felç eden bir buhran, bu insanlara tıpkı gelinleri gibi güzel ve sevilesi gelir. s.178

As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him.

let him look into [fear's] eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, - see the whelping of this lion, - which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era

Ralph Waldo Emerson had this truth in mind when he said (in his essay on Compensation), “If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer

As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its owns books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of the mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.

and, of course, the self-accursation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye.

O yüzden, baht, kader denilen her şeyden tamamıyla yararlanın. Çoğu insan onunla kumar oynar, ne varsa kazanır ve hepsini kaybeder çarkı döndükçe. Ancak haksız kazanç olduğu için bunları terk edin, sebep ve sonuçla ilgilenin, Tanrı'nın vaizleridir onlar. İradeyle çalışıp kazanın, talihi, kaderi, çarkıfeleği zincire vurun, onun dönmesinden korkmadan oturursunuz böylece. Siyasi bir zafer, kiraların artışı, hasta arkadaşının iyileşmesi ya da uzakta olan arkadaşının dönüşü ya da başka güzel bir olay, seni neşelendirir ve senin için iyi günlerin geleceğini düşünürsün. İnanma buna. Sana senden başka hiçbir şey huzur veremez. İlkelerin zaferinden başka hiçbir şey sana huzur veremez." s. 64

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own and malice finds all her work in vain. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.

Kendimize güvenme konusunda gözümüzü korkutan bir başka dehşet kaynağı da tutarlılığımız, geçmişte yaptıklarımıza ve söylediklerimize duyduğumuz derin saygıdır. Zira başkalarının gözleri, yaptıklarımızı hesap etmek için geçmişteki hareketlerimizden başka bir veriye sahip değildir ve bizler de onları hayal kırıklığına uğratmayı hiç mi hiç istemeyiz. Peki neden sağduyu sahibi olmanız gerekiyor ki? Öyle ya da böyle insan içinde söyledikleriniz ile çelişmeyin diye neden hafızanızın cesedini sürükleyesiniz ki? Geçmişi bin gözlü şimdi tarafından yargılamak ve yeni bir günde yaşamak yerine, salt hafızayla ilgili hallerde dahi, tek başına hafızaya asla güvenmemek neredeyse bilgeliğin kuralı gibi görünüyor. Kendi metafizik anlayışınıza göre, Tanrı'ya bir kişilik vermeyi reddettiniz, ancak ruhun içtenliği ortaya çıkınca, kalbi ve canı ona bırakınız, zira Tanrı'yı şekle ve renge büründürecektir. Nazariyenizi bir kenara bırakınız, tıpkı Yusuf'un, gömleğini kadına bıraktığı gibi ve kaçınız. Ahmakça tutarlılık, küçük akılların gulyabanisidir, küçük devlet adamları, filozoflar ve ilahiyatçılar ise tapar ona. Tutarlılıkla yüce bir ruhun yapacağı kesinlikle hiçbir şey yoktur. Duvardaki gölgesiyle ilgilenir. Şu an ne düşündüğünü ağır sözlerle ifade et, yarın da yine düşündüğünü ağır sözlerle ifade et, bugün söylediğin her şeyle çelişse bile. Ah, o zaman kesin yanlış anlaşılacaksın. Yanlış anlaşılmak o kadar kötü bir şey mi ki? Pisagor yanlış anlaşılmıştı, Sokrates de, İsa da, Luther de, Kopernik de, Galileo ve Newton da, ete bürünmüş her saf ve bilge ruh da yanlış anlaşılmıştı. Büyük olmak yanlış anlaşılmaktır." s.44-45

new age of “dynamism” and a compensating new science of “dynamics” to “treat the primary unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of love, and fear, and wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character.” The human, he says, “is not the creature and product of mechanism, but in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.” “Signs of the Times” is one of the best pieces Carlyle ever wrote. Critique is balanced by prospectus, denunciation by advocacy. “This deep paralysed subjection to physical objects comes not from nature, but from our own unwise mode of viewing nature.” Nowhere in English is there a more forceful statement of the importance of the German concept of Bildung. “To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects in himself.”10

Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard, —"Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault.

The voice of the Almighty saith, "Up and onward forever more!” We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the New; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.     —RalphWaldo Emerson; American poet, essayist, visionary, giver

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.   As

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

was deeply congenial to the man who was already brooding on the idea that all things have their compensations.3 Cousin was on a path parallel to Emerson’s in several respects. Lecture 10 of the Cours is an extensive treatment of great men, understood by Cousin as by Emerson, not as individuals but as representative or symbolic figures. Great persons are “representations of nations, epochs, of humanity, of nature, and of universal order.” Cousin was farther down this road than Emerson at the moment, but Emerson would return to this theme in the 1840s.4 From Emerson’s excited reading of

We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent. Cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually.