Emerson Makes Me Think

Here are my thoughts on a few quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Some of his stuff I totally get, and other times, I feel like I need a translator! I'm happy to share some of the things I've been reading that have struck a chord with my soul.

"Each man has an aptitude, and can do easily some feat impossible to any other."
Isn't it wonderful to think that YOU can do something (easily!) that someone else couldn't do at all? To you your talents may seem inconsequential or even non-existent, but someone else is probably looking at you and admiring how well you do that and thinking it's impossible for them to do the same!

This quote follows that same line of thinking:
"Each man is a new power in nature; has an aptitude which none else has; is a new method, and distributes things anew."


"What is a day? To a stone, it is duration; to an ox, it is hay, grass, and water; to a rational man, it is a splendor of beauty and opportunity."
I think I'd rather be a rational man than a stone or an ox, anyday. I guess I should focus more on the beauty and opportunity of the day and less on the duration!



This next quotes made me stop and think about this amazing world we live on. To think that God made everything on it to work in such harmony and without any perceived effort is humbling. There is great power in God's creations, whether man or nature.



"Our Copernican globe is a great factory or shop of power, with its rotating constellations, times, and tides, bringing now the day of planting, then of reaping, then of curing and storing; bringing now water-force, then wind, then caloric, and such magazine of chemicals in its laboratory. The machine is of colossal size; the diameter of the waterwheel, the arms of the levers, and the volley of the battery are out of all mechanic measure, and it takes long to understand its parts, and its working. This pump never sucks; These screws are never loose. This machine is never out of gear; the vat, and piston, and wheels, and tires, never wear out, but are self-repairing.



"There is no porter like gravitation, who will bring down any weight which you cannot carry, and, if he wants aid, knows where to find his fellow laborers. Water works in masses, and sets his irresistible shoulder to your mills, or to your ships, or transports vast boulders of rock nicely packed in his iceberg atmosphere a thousand miles. The water, that daily miracle, a substance as explosive as gunpowder; the electric force contained in a drop of water being equal to that which is discharged from a thunder cloud. But its far greater power depends on its talent of becoming little; and entering the smallest holes and pores.



"You admire the lake; -now look at that cloud-rack that overspreads it in the morning. That is the same lake in the air. Now a picture, now a bed for angels, hangings of adornment for the stars of God;"