Emerson's Complete Works: Essays. 1st seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1883 |
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Page 11
... become Greeks , Romans , Turks , priest and king , martyr and executioner ; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience , or we shall learn nothing rightly . What befell As- drubal or Cæsar Borgia is as much an ...
... become Greeks , Romans , Turks , priest and king , martyr and executioner ; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience , or we shall learn nothing rightly . What befell As- drubal or Cæsar Borgia is as much an ...
Page 15
... becomes subjec- tive ; in other words there is properly no history , only biography . Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself , must go over the whole ground . What it does not see , what it does not live , it will not know ...
... becomes subjec- tive ; in other words there is properly no history , only biography . Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself , must go over the whole ground . What it does not see , what it does not live , it will not know ...
Page 21
... becoming a tree ; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely , but , by watching for a time his motions and plays , the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at will in every attitude . So Roos " entered ...
... becoming a tree ; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely , but , by watching for a time his motions and plays , the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at will in every attitude . So Roos " entered ...
Page 25
... becomes fluid and true , and Biography deep and sublime . As the Persian imi- tated in the slender shafts and capitals of his archi- tecture the stem and flower of the lotus and palm , so the Persian court in its magnificent era never ...
... becomes fluid and true , and Biography deep and sublime . As the Persian imi- tated in the slender shafts and capitals of his archi- tecture the stem and flower of the lotus and palm , so the Persian court in its magnificent era never ...
Page 29
... become the predominant habit of the mind . Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old , but of the natural . The Greeks are not reflective , but perfect in their senses and in their health , with the finest physical ...
... become the predominant habit of the mind . Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old , but of the natural . The Greeks are not reflective , but perfect in their senses and in their health , with the finest physical ...
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action appear beautiful soul beauty become behold better black event Bonduca Cæsar character conversation divine doctrine earth effect Egypt Epaminondas ergy eternal evanescent experience fable fact fear feel friendship genius gifts give Greek hand heart heaven Heraclitus heroism hour human intel intellect less light live look man's marriage ment mind moral nature never noble object OVER-SOUL painted pass perception perfect persons Petrarch Phidias Phocion picture Pindar Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry prudence relations religion Rome sculpture secret seek seems seen sense sensual sentiment Shakspeare society Socrates Sophocles soul speak Spinoza spirit stand Stoicism sweet talent teach tence thee things thou thought tion to-day to-morrow true truth ture universal virtue whilst whole wisdom wise words Xenophon youth
Popular passages
Page 52 - Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Page 52 - They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this ; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
Page 334 - Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Page 318 - ... the laws of its influx. Exactly parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral duty. A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forego all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented. God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both.
Page 54 - ... philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousandfold relief societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes...
Page 252 - The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.
Page 55 - 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 252 - The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as " : the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; ithat Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's -particular being is contained and made one with all other...
Page 55 - ... they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - x The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.
Page 47 - Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.