The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 2Macmillan, 1883 - American literature |
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Page 23
... seems , the same fellow - beings as I. The sun and moon , water and fire , met his heart precisely as they meet mine . Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English , between Classic and Romantic schools , seems superficial and ...
... seems , the same fellow - beings as I. The sun and moon , water and fire , met his heart precisely as they meet mine . Then the vaunted distinction between Greek and English , between Classic and Romantic schools , seems superficial and ...
Page 27
... seems the self - defence of man against this untruth , namely , a discontent with the believed fact that a God exists , and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous . It would steal , if it could , the fire of the Creator ...
... seems the self - defence of man against this untruth , namely , a discontent with the believed fact that a God exists , and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous . It would steal , if it could , the fire of the Creator ...
Page 29
... 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 40
... seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries . Bashful or bold , then , he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary . The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner , 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 unnecessary . The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner , and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say ...
Page 41
... 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 ...
... 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 ...
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Common terms and phrases
action Æsop animal appear beauty behold better Bonduca Cæsar Calvinistic character chivalry church conversation dæmon divine earth Epaminondas eternal experience expression fact fancy fear feel flower force friendship genius gifts give hand heart heaven Heraclitus honour hour human individual intel intellect labour LESLIE STEPHEN light live look man's manner marriage mind moral Napoleon nature never numbers object ourselves OVER-SOUL painted Parliament of Love party pass perception perfect persons Phidias Phocion phrenology Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry politics present Proclus prudence Pythagoras relations religion rich secret seems sense sentiment society Socrates Sophocles soul speak spirit stand stars sweet symbol talent thee things thou thought tion true truth universal virtue whilst whole wisdom wise wonderful words Xenophon Zoroaster
Popular passages
Page 64 - At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
Page 35 - Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
Page 47 - A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Page 478 - To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State.
Page 43 - 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 succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Page 278 - 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 49 - An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.
Page 172 - ... each stands for the whole world. What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say anything to such 1 No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland.
Page 325 - These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out into free space, and they help him to escape the custody of that body in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of individual relations in which he is enclosed.
Page 218 - 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; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other...