“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Context: But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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