Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 1Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1876 - American essays |
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Page 12
... secret experience , or we shall learn nothing rightly . What befell Asdrubal or Cæsar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and deprivations as what has befallen us . Each new law and political move- ment has meaning ...
... secret experience , or we shall learn nothing rightly . What befell Asdrubal or Cæsar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and deprivations as what has befallen us . Each new law and political move- ment has meaning ...
Page 15
... secret sense , and poetry and annals are alike . The instinct of the mind , the purpose of nature , betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of his- tory . Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angu- larity of ...
... secret sense , and poetry and annals are alike . The instinct of the mind , the purpose of nature , betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of his- tory . Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angu- larity of ...
Page 31
... secret biography he finds in lines wonder- fully intelligible to him , dotted down before he was born . One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Æsop , of Homer , of Hafiz , of Ariosto , of Chaucer ...
... secret biography he finds in lines wonder- fully intelligible to him , dotted down before he was born . One after another he comes up in his private adventures with every fable of Æsop , of Homer , of Hafiz , of Ariosto , of Chaucer ...
Page 34
... secret virtues of minerals , of understanding the voices of birds , are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction . The preternatural prowess of the hero , the gift of per- petual youth , and the like , are alike the endeavor ...
... secret virtues of minerals , of understanding the voices of birds , are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right direction . The preternatural prowess of the hero , the gift of per- petual youth , and the like , are alike the endeavor ...
Page 67
... truth and health in rough electric shocks , putting them once more in communication with their own reason . The secret of fortune is joy in our hands . Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self - helping SELF - RELIANCE . 67.
... truth and health in rough electric shocks , putting them once more in communication with their own reason . The secret of fortune is joy in our hands . Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self - helping SELF - RELIANCE . 67.
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Common terms and phrases
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.