Quote#God & Faith
I like a church, I like a cowl
Quote byRalph Waldo Emerson · 1803–1882
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Poems (1847), The Problem, st. 1.
English (original)
I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
More from Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.
Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.
I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely.