Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 1Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1876 - American essays |
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Page 15
... keep a fact a fact . Babylon , Troy , Tyre , Palestine , and early Rome have passed or are passing into fiction . The Garden of Eden , the sun standing still in Gibeon , is poetry thenceforward to all nations . Who cares what the fact ...
... keep a fact a fact . Babylon , Troy , Tyre , Palestine , and early Rome have passed or are passing into fiction . The Garden of Eden , the sun standing still in Gibeon , is poetry thenceforward to all nations . Who cares what the fact ...
Page 26
... keeping wit , on the other hand , is that continence or content which finds all the elements of life in its own soil ; and which has its own perils of monot- ony and deterioration , if not stimulated by foreign infu- sions . Everything ...
... keeping wit , on the other hand , is that continence or content which finds all the elements of life in its own soil ; and which has its own perils of monot- ony and deterioration , if not stimulated by foreign infu- sions . Everything ...
Page 49
... keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude . The objection to conforming to usages that have be- come dead to you is , that it scatters your force . It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character . If you ...
... keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude . The objection to conforming to usages that have be- come dead to you is , that it scatters your force . It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character . If you ...
Page 51
... eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts , and we are loath to disap- point them . But why should you keep your head over your shoul- der ? Why drag about this corpse of your memory SELF - RELIANCE . 51.
... eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts , and we are loath to disap- point them . But why should you keep your head over your shoul- der ? Why drag about this corpse of your memory SELF - RELIANCE . 51.
Page 55
... keep things under his feet . Let him not peep or steal , or skulk up and down with the air of a charity - boy , a bastard , or an inter- loper , in the world which exists for him . But the man in the street , finding no worth in himself ...
... keep things under his feet . Let him not peep or steal , or skulk up and down with the air of a charity - boy , a bastard , or an inter- loper , in the world which exists for him . But the man in the street , finding no worth in himself ...
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action Æsop animal appear beauty begin to hope behold better black event Bonduca Cæsar Calvinistic character chivalry church conversation divine earth Epaminondas eternal experience expression fact fancy feel flower force friendship genius gifts give hand heart heaven Heraclitus hour human individual intellect less light live look man's manner marriage ment mind moral Napoleon nature never object ourselves painted Parliament of Love party pass perfect persons Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry present Proclus prudence Pythagoras RALPH WALDO EMERSON relations religion rich sculpture secret seems sense sentiment Shakspeare society Sophocles soul speak spirit stand stars sweet symbol talent thee things thou thought tion to-day true truth universal virtue whilst whole wisdom wise wonderful words Xenophon youth Zoroaster
Popular passages
Page 47 - What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child. I will live then from the Devil.
Page 282 - Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Page 215 - Meantime within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise silence ; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object are one.
Page 19 - So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight, With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For, of the soul, the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make.
Page 269 - God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely his father's. He gets test, commodity, and reputation ; but he shuts the door of truth.
Page 50 - If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
Page 97 - Even so doth God protect us if we be Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters roll, Strength to the brave, and power, and deity, Yet in themselves are nothing...
Page 37 - Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, Methodism and Unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, and the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away.
Page 49 - What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
Page 241 - But the heart refuses to be imprisoned ; in its first and narrowest pulses it already tends outward with a vast force and to immense and innumerable expansions.