Emerson's Complete Works: Essays. 1st seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1883 |
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Page 47
... highest merit we ascribe to Moses , Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and tradi- tions , and spoke not what men , but what they thought . A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across ...
... highest merit we ascribe to Moses , Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and tradi- tions , and spoke not what men , but what they thought . A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across ...
Page 49
... highest mind the same transcendent destiny ; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner , not cowards fleeing before a revolution , but guides , redeemers and benefactors , obeying the Al- mighty effort and advancing on Chaos and ...
... highest mind the same transcendent destiny ; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner , not cowards fleeing before a revolution , but guides , redeemers and benefactors , obeying the Al- mighty effort and advancing on Chaos and ...
Page 68
... highest truth on this subject remains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; for all that we say is the far - off remembering of the intui- tion . That thought by what I can now nearest ap- proach to say it , is this . When good is near you ...
... highest truth on this subject remains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; for all that we say is the far - off remembering of the intui- tion . That thought by what I can now nearest ap- proach to say it , is this . When good is near you ...
Page 76
... highest point of view . It is the soliloquy of a be- holding and jubilant soul . It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good . But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft . It supposes dualism and not ...
... highest point of view . It is the soliloquy of a be- holding and jubilant soul . It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good . But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft . It supposes dualism and not ...
Page 78
... Highest . Such is Cal- vinism , Quakerism , Swedenborgism . The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new sea- sons thereby . It ...
... Highest . Such is Cal- vinism , Quakerism , Swedenborgism . The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new sea- sons thereby . It ...
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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.