Essays: First Series, passage 1028

[Footnote 27: If you do not employ such talent as you have in original labor, in bearing the mental fruit of which you are capable, then you do not vindicate your claim to a share in the divine nature.]

Essays: First Series, passage 350

We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

Essays: First Series, passage 164

They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Essays: First Series, passage 908

Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code and the day's work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted. We have violated law upon law until we stand amidst ruins, and when by chance we espy a coincidence between reason and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of every man and woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare.

Essays: First Series, passage 1037

[Footnote 36: Plato (429-347 B.C.). One of the most illustrious philosophers of all time. Probably no other philosopher has contributed so much as Plato to the moral and intellectual training of the human race. This pre-eminence is due not solely to his transcendent intellect, but also in no small measure to his poetic power and to that unrivaled grace of style which led the ancients to say that if Jove should speak Greek he would speak like Plato. He was a remarkable example of that universal culture of body and mind which characterized the last period of ancient Greece. He was proficient in every branch of art and learning and was such a brilliant athlete that he contended in the Isthmian and Pythian games.]

Essays: First Series, passage 1465

[Footnote 583: Grotius. Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, statesman, theologian, and poet of the seventeenth century.]

Essays: First Series, passage 1236

[Footnote 304: Crimen quos, etc. The Latin saying is translated in the preceding sentence.]

Essays: First Series, passage 793

The people had tasted this new joy; and, as we could not hope to suppress newspapers now,--no, not by the strongest party,--neither then could king, prelate, or puritan,--alone or united, suppress an organ, which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch,[530] and library, at the same time. Probably king, prelate, and puritan, all found their own account in it.

Essays: First Series, passage 244

As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl.

Essays: First Series, passage 1549

[Footnote 683: Stick in a tree between whiles, etc. "Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping."--Scott's _Heart of Midlothian_. It is said that these were the words of a dying Scotchman to his son.]

Essays: First Series, passage 1222

[Footnote 286: Genius. According to an old belief, a spirit that watched over a person to control, guide and aid him.]

Essays: First Series, passage 51

Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell is enough to persuade us that Pope did not exaggerate when he said that no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.... Apart from his difficult staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary faults.

Essays: First Series, passage 1331

[Footnote 429: Burke. Both Fox and Burke opposed the taxation of the American colonies and sympathized with their resistance; it was on the subject of the French Revolution that the two friends clashed.]

Essays: First Series, passage 716

There is nothing so wonderful in any particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.

Essays: First Series, passage 664

What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart and yours lone holiday from the national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz[450] could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman[451] who dwelt at his gate.

Essays: First Series, passage 97

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well.

Essays: First Series, passage 681

"Brother, if Jove[465] to thee a present make, Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."

Essays: First Series, passage 1505

[Footnote 630: The antres vost, etc. See _Othello_, I. 3. "Antres" is an old word, meaning caves, caverns.]

Essays: First Series, passage 835

It appears that, from year to year, he owned a larger share in the Blackfriars' Theater:[618] its wardrobe and other appurtenances were his: and he bought an estate in his native village, with his earnings, as writer and shareholder; that he lived in the best house in Stratford;[619] was intrusted by his neighbors with their commissions in London, as of borrowing money, and the like; and he was a veritable farmer.

Essays: First Series, passage 307

If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.[180] Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes.

Essays: First Series, passage 360

If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.[222] But so may you give these friends pain.

Essays: First Series, passage 663

rich enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which commends him "To the charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and hope?

Essays: First Series, passage 743

Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

Essays: First Series, passage 1336

[Footnote 435: Cologne water. A perfumed water first made at the city of Cologne in Germany, from which it took its name.]

Essays: First Series, passage 931

It is a proverb that "courtesy costs nothing"; but calculation might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind, but kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water.

Essays: First Series, passage 1186

[Footnote 244: Palmyra, a ruined city of Asia situated in an oasis of the Syrian desert, supposed to be the Tadmor built by Solomon in the wilderness (_II. Chr._, viii. 4).]

Essays: First Series, passage 811

But Chaucer is a huge borrower.[556] Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgat[557] and Caxton,[558] from Guido di Colonna,[559] whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phrygius,[560] Ovid,[561] and Statius.[562] Then Petrarch,[563] Boccaccio,[564] and the Provençal poets,[565] and his benefactors: the Romaunt of the Rose[566] is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and John of Meung: Troilus and Creseide,[567] from Lollius of Urbino: The Cock and the Fox,[568] from the _Lais_ of Marie: The House of Fame,[569] from the French or Italian: and poor Gower[570] he uses as if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build his house.

Essays: First Series, passage 67

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man,--present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Essays: First Series, passage 137

Men in history, men in the world of to-day, are bugs, are spawn, and are called "the mass" and "the herd." In a century, in a millennium, one or two men;[72] that is to say, one or two approximations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in the hero or the poet their own green and crude being,--ripened; yes, and are content to be less, so _that_ may attain to its full stature.

Essays: First Series

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