The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that physical, visible things are temporary, while spiritual and invisible truths possess eternal significance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the contrast between the temporary nature of material existence and the everlasting nature of spiritual truths. By asserting that the seen is temporal and the unseen is eternal, he suggests that true understanding and value lie beyond what is visible and tangible, challenging the reader to look deeper into the nature of existence and spirituality.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to illustrate the importance of focusing on spiritual well-being over material wealth.
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?
We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.
In modern society most of us don't want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
In war, the truth must be guarded by a body guard of lies.
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naΓ―ve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.
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