Essays: First Series, passage 1153

[Footnote 199: Spartan. The ancient Spartans were noted for their courage and fortitude.]

Essays: First Series, passage 437

All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought.

Essays: First Series, passage 327

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred,[207] and Scanderbeg,[208] and Gustavus?[209] Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the luster will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

Essays: First Series, passage 1217

[Footnote 281: My friends have come to me, etc.: Compare with Emerson's views here expressed the noble passage in his essay on _The Over-Soul_: "Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly in endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one."]

Essays: First Series, passage 491

1. In the elder English dramatists,[311] and mainly in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher,[312] there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily marked in the society of their age, as color is in our American population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio[313] enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor exclaims, This is a gentleman,--and proffers civilities without end; but all the rest are slag and refuse.

Essays: First Series, passage 839

It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier,[621] have wasted their oil. The famed theaters, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont,[622] have vainly assisted. Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready,[623] dedicate their lives to this genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. The genius knows them not.

Essays: First Series, passage 455

I much prefer the company of plow-boys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity which only celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle,[302] and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death.

Essays: First Series, passage 293

Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim_.[170] I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.

Essays: First Series, passage 1252

[Footnote 322: Harleian Miscellanies. A collection of manuscripts published in the eighteenth century, and named for Robert Harley, the English statesman who collected them.]

Essays: First Series, passage 492

In harmony with this delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue,--as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double Marriage,[314]--wherein the speaker is so earnest and cordial, and on such deep grounds of character, that the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts, take the following.

Essays: First Series, passage 1181

[Footnote 238: Fourier (1772-1837), French socialist, founder of the system of Fourierism.]

Essays: First Series, passage 747

She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions,--an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This glitter, this opaline luster plays round the top of every toy to his eye, to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We are made alive and kept alive by the same arts.

Essays: First Series, passage 1060

[Footnote 66: Signet. Seal. Emerson is not always felicitous in his choice of metaphors.]

Essays: First Series, passage 885

The world is filled with the proverbs[663] and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which gives never, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,--Will it bake bread? This is a disease like a thickening of the skin until the vital organs are destroyed.

Essays: First Series, passage 548

19. It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound nature has set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach a brink over which no enemy can follow us.

Essays: First Series, passage 521

Strangers may present themselves at any hour, and in whatever number; the master has amply provided for the reception of the men and their animals, and is never happier than when they tarry for some time.

Essays: First Series, passage 1196

[Footnote 258: Dante (1265-1321), the greatest of Italian poets, author of the _Divina Commedia_.]

Essays: First Series, passage 473

19. Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own before we can be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in crime, according to the Latin proverb;--you can speak to your accomplice on even terms. _Crimen quos[304] inquinat, æquat_. To those whom we admire and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

Essays: First Series, passage 154

I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of?

Essays: First Series, passage 306

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.[179] And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor.

Essays: First Series, passage 1304

[Footnote 384: Men of the right Cæsarian pattern. Men versatile as was Julius Cæsar, the Roman, famous as a general, statesman, orator, and writer.]

Essays: First Series, passage 559

_Comme il faut_, is the Frenchman's description of good society, _as we must be_. It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this hour, and, though far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be.

Essays: First Series, passage 76

It presently learns that since the dawn of history there has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion.

Essays: First Series, passage 790

The human race has gone out before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into their labors. Choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations.

Essays: First Series, passage 966

The idealism of Berkeley[702] is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the minds of men.

Essays: First Series, passage 699

Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother, when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath.

Essays: First Series, passage 721

Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace nobody looks at the walls.

Essays: First Series, passage 406

But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental,--came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away.

Essays: First Series, passage 1486

[Footnote 606: Bacon. Consult English literature and history for an account of the great statesman and author, Francis Bacon, "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."]

Essays: First Series, passage 1338

[Footnote 438: As Heaven and Earth are fairer far, etc. This passage is quoted from Book II. of Keats' _Hyperion_.]

Essays: First Series, passage 1213

"Nec metuis dubio Fortunæ stantis in orbe Numen, et exosæ verba superba deæ?" OVID, _Tristia_, v., 8, 8.

Essays: First Series, passage 1402

[Footnote 507: All duly arrive. Emerson deducts from nature the doctrine of evolution. What is its teaching?]

Essays: First Series, passage 818

9. It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. Our English Bible[581] is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the English language. But it was not made by one man, or at one time; but centuries and churches brought it to perfection. There never was a time when there was not some translation existing.

Essays: First Series, passage 1077

[Footnote 84: William Cowper (1731-1800). One of the most popular of English poets. His poem "The Task" was probably more read in his day than any poem of equal length in the language. Cowper also made an excellent translation of Homer.]

Essays: First Series, passage 705

A holiday, a villeggiatura,[480] a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty.

Essays: First Series, passage 1487

[Footnote 607: Ben Jonson, etc. In his _Timber or Discoveries_, Ben Jonson, a famous classical dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare, says: "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature: had an excellent fancy; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.... His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter.... But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."]

Essays: First Series, passage 354

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit.

Essays: First Series, passage 720

Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan,[498] who ought to be represented in the mythology as the most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right of returning often to this old topic. The multitude of false churches[499] accredits the true religion. Literature, poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity.

Essays: First Series, passage 292

If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes,[169] why should I not say to him: "Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.

Essays: First Series, passage 1014

[Footnote 11: Beholden. Emerson here uses this past participle with its original meaning instead of in its present sense of "indebted."]

Essays: First Series, passage 221

Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early Hellenic[125] world, that I would know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass when we come to the highest criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought.

Essays: First Series, passage 1018

[Footnote 15: Observe the brisk movement of these sentences. How they catch and hold the attention, giving a new impulse to the reader's interest!]

Essays: First Series, passage 1049

[Footnote 53: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). A great English philosopher and mathematician. He is famous as having discovered the law of gravitation.]

Essays: First Series, passage 1076

[Footnote 83: Robert Burns (1759-1796). A celebrated Scottish poet. The most striking characteristics of Burns' poetry are simplicity and intensity, in which he is scarcely, if at all, inferior to any of the greatest poets that have ever lived.]

Essays: First Series, passage 2

INTRODUCTION LIFE OF EMERSON CRITICAL OPINIONS CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS

Essays: First Series, passage 749

All things betray the same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which the animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or a sudden noise, protects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race.

Essays: First Series, passage 970

We all stand waiting, empty,--knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god and converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest.

Essays: First Series, passage 145

It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

Essays: First Series, passage 318

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

Essays: First Series, passage 539

The silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision.