Essays: First Series
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1,579 passages indexed from Essays: First Series (Ralph Waldo Emerson) — Page 31 of 32
License: Public Domain
Essays: First Series, passage 575
I use these old names, but the men I speak of are my contemporaries.[397] Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every collection of men furnishes some example of the class: and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular.
Essays: First Series, passage 732
8. Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and equips another animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence.
Essays: First Series, passage 999
The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals. Character makes an overpowering present, a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror we do not think much of any one battle or success.
Essays: First Series, passage 1230
[Footnote 296: Naturlangsamkeit. A German word meaning slowness. The slowness of natural development.]
Essays: First Series, passage 911
We have found out[675] fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art rebukes him. That never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense.
Essays: First Series, passage 11
A few months later (1833) he went to Europe for a short year of travel. While abroad, he visited Walter Savage Landor, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. This visit to Carlyle was to both men a most interesting experience. They parted feeling that they had much intellectually in common. This belief fostered a sympathy which, by the time they had discovered how different they really were, had grown so strong a habit that they always kept up their intimacy. This year of travel opened Emerson's eyes to many things of which he had previously been ignorant; he had profited by detachment from the concerns of a limited community and an isolated church.
Essays: First Series, passage 468
Leave it to girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure instead of the noblest benefits.
Essays: First Series, passage 828
He no doubt thought the praise he has conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question, the better poet of the two.
Essays: First Series, passage 1482
[Footnote 602: Leicester. The Earl of Leicester, famous in Shakespeare's time, was Robert Dudley, an English courtier, politician, and general, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth.]
Essays: First Series, passage 417
For long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers. But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over. He has heard the first, the last and best, he will ever hear from us. He is no stranger now.
Essays: First Series, passage 368
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who _teams it, farms it_,[225] _peddles_, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.
Essays: First Series, passage 668
"I overheard Jove,[453] one day," said Silenus,[454] "talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other.
Essays: First Series, passage 1574
[Footnote 710: "Then shall also the Son", etc. See 1 Corinthians xv. 28: Does Emerson quote the passage verbatim?]
Essays: First Series, passage 1286
[Footnote 365: Lovejoy. Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian clergyman of Maine who published a periodical against slavery. In 1837 an Illinois mob demanded his printing press, which he refused to give up. The building containing it was set on fire and when Lovejoy came out he was shot.]
Essays: First Series, passage 128
He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find true for them also.
Essays: First Series, passage 238
The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that everything has its price,--and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get anything without its price,--is not less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature.
Essays: First Series, passage 166
Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; not to be reckoned one character; not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and friends,--please God, ours shall not be so.
Essays: First Series, passage 1085
[Footnote 92: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827). A Swiss teacher and educational reformer of great influence in his time.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1126
[Footnote 157: Chaos ([Greek: Chaos]), the confused, unorganized condition in which the world was supposed to have existed before it was reduced to harmony and order; hence, utter confusion and disorder.]
Essays: First Series, passage 527
11. But that which takes my fancy most, in the heroic class, is the good humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a height to which common duty can very well attain, to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls set opinion, success, and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, but wear their own habitual greatness.
Essays: First Series, passage 1383
[Footnote 482: Versailles. A royal residence near Paris, with beautiful formal gardens.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1110
[Footnote 134: Compare the old proverb "Murder will out." See Chaucer, _N.P.T._, 232 and 237, and _Pr. T._, 124.]
Essays: First Series, passage 976
Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially prized, "Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all."[710] Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out of the book itself.
Essays: First Series, passage 736
The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly related, there amid essences and billets-doux, to Himalaya mountain-chains[509] and the axis of the globe. If we consider how much we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature, who made the mason, made the house.
Essays: First Series, passage 477
Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.
Essays: First Series, passage 1154
[Footnote 200: Julius Cæsar (100-44 B.C.), the great Roman general, statesman, orator, and author.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1292
[Footnote 371: Tibboos, Bornoos. Tribes of Central Africa, mentioned in Heeren's _Historical Researches_.]
Essays: First Series, passage 3
This series of books will include in complete editions those masterpieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use of schools and colleges. The editors of the several volumes will be chosen for their special qualifications in connection with the texts to be issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship, will characterize the editing of every book in the series.
Essays: First Series, passage 520
Ibn Hankal,[335] the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bokhar,[336] "When I was in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates of which were open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. I asked the reason, and was told that the house had not been shut, night or day, for a hundred years.
Essays: First Series, passage 1119
[Footnote 151: Milton (1608-1674), the great English epic poet, author of _Paradise Lost._
Essays: First Series, passage 915
He resembles the opium eaters whom travellers describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day, the most pitiful drivellers, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; then at evening, when the bazaars are open, they slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become tranquil, glorious and great.
Essays: First Series, passage 1113
[Footnote 142: Jesus. Holmes writes of Emerson: "Jesus was for him a divine manifestation, but only as other great human souls have been in all ages and are to-day. He was willing to be called a Christian just as he was willing to be called a Platonist.... If he did not worship the 'man Christ Jesus' as the churches of Christendom have done, he followed his footsteps so nearly that our good Methodist, Father Taylor, spoke of him as more like Christ than any man he had known."]
Essays: First Series, passage 755
After some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes? The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes the other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself.
Essays: First Series, passage 1522
[Footnote 651: Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the sense of "gipsy." He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by the gipsies.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1500
[Footnote 623: Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready, famous British actors of the Shakespearian parts.]
Essays: First Series, passage 888
The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. The true prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. This recognition once made,--the order of the world and the distribution of affairs and times being studied with the co-perception of their subordinate place, will reward any degree of attention. For, our existence, thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and the returning moon and the periods which they mark; so susceptible to climate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond of splendor and so tender to hunger and cold and debt,--reads all its primary lessons out of these books.
Essays: First Series, passage 392
Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld[259] again.
Essays: First Series, passage 411
So use all that is called Fortune.[277] Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancelors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Essays: First Series, passage 1525
[Footnote 657: A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the English writer, in his famous _Pilgrim's Progress_.]
Essays: First Series, passage 242
"Winds blow and waters roll Strength to the brave, and power and deity, Yet in themselves are nothing."
Essays: First Series, passage 1339
[Footnote 439: Waverley. The Waverley novels, a name applied to all of Scott's novels from _Waverley_, the title of the first one.]
Essays: First Series, passage 714
4. The moral sensibility which makes Edens[490] and Tempes[491] so easily, may not be always found, but the material landscape is never far off. We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake,[492] or the Madeira Islands.[493] We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies.
Essays: First Series, passage 112
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary.[52] Years are well spent in country labors; in town; in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.
Essays: First Series, passage 369
Let a Stoic[226] open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh,[227] born to shed healing to the nations,[228] that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him,--and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.
Essays: First Series, passage 1357
[Footnote 462: A man's biography, etc. Emerson wrote in his journal: "Long ago I wrote of _gifts_ and neglected a capital example. John Thoreau, Jr. [who, like his brother Henry, was a lover of nature] one day put a bluebird's box on my barn,--fifteen years ago it must be,--and there it still is, with every summer a melodious family in it adorning the place and singing its praises. There's a gift for you which cost the giver no money, but nothing which he bought could have been as good."]
Essays: First Series, passage 338
Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.
Essays: First Series, passage 772
To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of the curve.
Essays: First Series, passage 101
III. There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,[40]--as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called "practical men" sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or _see_, they could do nothing.
Essays: First Series, passage 515
7. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life.
Essays: First Series, passage 1332
[Footnote 430: Sheridan. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irish dramatist, member of the famous Literary Club to which both Fox and Burke belonged.]