Emerson's Complete Works: Essays. 1st seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1883 |
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Page 30
... seems the same fellow - beings as I. moon , water and fire , met his heart precisely as they meet mine . Then the vaunted distinction be- tween Greek and English , between Classic and Ro- mantic schools , seems superficial and pedantic ...
... seems the same fellow - beings as I. moon , water and fire , met his heart precisely as they meet mine . Then the vaunted distinction be- tween Greek and English , between Classic and Ro- mantic schools , seems superficial and pedantic ...
Page 34
... seems the self - defence of man against this untruth , namely a discontent with the believed fact that a God ex- ists , and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous . It would steal if it could the fire of the Creator , and ...
... seems the self - defence of man against this untruth , namely a discontent with the believed fact that a God ex- ists , and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous . It would steal if it could the fire of the Creator , and ...
Page 37
... seems to vent a mere caprice and wild romance , the issue is an exact allegory . Hence Plato said that " poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand . " All the fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves ...
... seems to vent a mere caprice and wild romance , the issue is an exact allegory . Hence Plato said that " poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand . " All the fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves ...
Page 50
... seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries . Bashful or bold then , he will know how to make us seniors very unnec- essary . The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a din- ner , and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say ...
... seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries . Bashful or bold then , he will know how to make us seniors very unnec- essary . The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a din- ner , and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say ...
Page 52
... 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 Good and bad are but me but that of my nature . names very readily transferable to that or this ; the only right is what ...
... 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 Good and bad are but me but that of my nature . names very readily transferable to that or this ; the only right is what ...
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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.