Essays: First Series
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1,579 passages indexed from Essays: First Series (Ralph Waldo Emerson) — Page 9 of 32
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Essays: First Series, passage 361
Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.
Essays: First Series, passage 339
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
Essays: First Series, passage 317
All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's[197] voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's[198] eye.
Essays: First Series, passage 148
Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.[77] Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical. We are embarrassed with second thoughts.[78] We cannot enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof the pleasure consists. We are lined with eyes. We see with our feet. The time is infected with Hamlet's unhappiness,--
Essays: First Series, passage 175
Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another day,--bank stock and doubloons,[96] venison and champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for what else?
Essays: First Series, passage 786
2. The Genius[526] of our life is jealous of individuals and will not have any individual great, except through the general. There is no choice to genius.
Essays: First Series, passage 904
The Raphael in the Dresden gallery[672] (the only great affecting picture which I have seen) is the quietest and most passionless piece you can imagine; a couple of saints who worship the Virgin and child. Nevertheless it awakens a deeper impression than the contortions of ten crucified martyrs.
Essays: First Series, passage 1046
[Footnote 50: Oliver Wendell Holmes cites this last sentence as the most extreme development of the distinctively Emersonian style. Such things must be read not too literally but rapidly, with alert attention to what the previous train of thought has been.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1519
[Footnote 646: Epicurus. A Greek philosopher of the third century before Christ. He was the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy which taught that pleasure should be man's chief aim and that the highest pleasure is freedom.]
Essays: First Series, passage 691
I find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick--no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel for you, and delight in you all the time.
Essays: First Series, passage 425
I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine, and a property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.
Essays: First Series, passage 1423
The first step in the creation of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond of pageants, shows in which classical personages were introduced, and Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas accompanied with music. About the middle of the sixteenth century, rose the English drama,--comedy, tragedy, and historical plays.
Essays: First Series, passage 840
The recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I remember, I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed performer,[624] the pride of the English stage; and all I then heard, and all I now remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the tragedian had no part; simply, Hamlet's question to the ghost,--
Essays: First Series, passage 1096
[Footnote 115: Prometheus stole fire from heaven to benefit the race of men. In punishment for this Jupiter chained him to a rock and set an eagle to prey upon his liver. Some unknown and terrible danger threatened Jupiter, the secret of averting which only Prometheus knew. For this secret Jupiter offered him his freedom.]
Essays: First Series, passage 727
Geology has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange our Mosaic[501] and Ptolemaic schemes[502] for her large style. We know nothing rightly, for want of perspective.
Essays: First Series, passage 1105
[Footnote 124: Shakespeare, the greatest of English writers, seems to have succeeded entirely or almost entirely in removing the personal element from his writings.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1541
[Footnote 674: Parts. A favorite eighteenth century term for abilities, talents.]
Essays: First Series, passage 774
But if, instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life preëxisting within us in their highest form.
Essays: First Series, passage 1378
[Footnote 476: The village. Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson's home the greater part of the time from 1832 till his death.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1173
[Footnote 226: Stoic, a disciple of the Greek philosopher Zeno, who taught that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy and grief, and should submit without complaint to the inevitable.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1432
[Footnote 540: Spanish voyages. In the sixteenth century, Spain was still a power upon the high seas, and the tales of her conquests and treasures in the New World were like tales of romance.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1403
[Footnote 510: Franklin. Give an account of Benjamin Franklin, the famous American scientist and patriot. What did he prove about lightening?]
Essays: First Series, passage 927
On the most profitable lie the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness proves to be the best tactics, for it invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing and makes their business a friendship. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great, though they make an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade.
Essays: First Series, passage 1146
[Footnote 187: Socrates (470?-399 B.C.), the great Athenian philosopher, whose teachings are the subject of most of Plato's writings, was accused of corrupting the youth, and condemned to drink hemlock.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1238
[Footnote 307: Harbinger. A forerunner; originally an officer who rode in advance of a royal person to secure proper lodgings and accommodations.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1410
[Footnote 523: Oedipus. In Greek mythology, the King of Thebes who solved the riddle of the Sphinx, a fabled monster.]
Essays: First Series, passage 709
In their soft glances, I see what men strove to realize in some Versailles,[482] or Paphos,[483] or Ctesiphon.[484] Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for the background, which save all our works of art, which were otherwise baubles. When the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they should consider the effect of man reputed to be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!
Essays: First Series, passage 1041
[Footnote 43: Dumb abyss. That vast immensity of the universe about us which we can never understand.]
Essays: First Series, passage 390
Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?[250] Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin,[251] or Washington, or Bacon,[252] or Newton?[253] Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio[254] is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.
Essays: First Series, passage 596
Later, they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, to take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way: and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion demands is composure, and self-content.
Essays: First Series, passage 715
The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common,[494] with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna,[495] or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and evening, will transfigure maples and alders. The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders.
Essays: First Series, passage 102
I have heard it said that the clergy--who are always, more universally than any other class, the scholars of their day--are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous conversation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing[41] and diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and indeed there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential.
Essays: First Series, passage 215
Siegfried,[119] in the Niebelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it must be. There is a crack in everything God has made.
Essays: First Series, passage 236
These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.
Essays: First Series, passage 542
It was a high counsel[363] that I once heard given to a young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple manly character need never make an apology, but should regard its past action with the calmness of Phocion,[364] when he admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the battle.
Essays: First Series, passage 949
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle,[696] which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end.
Essays: First Series, passage 1145
[Footnote 186: Pythagoras (fl. about 520 B.C.), a Greek philosopher. His society was scattered and persecuted by the fury of the populace.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1010
[Footnote 5: It is now a well-recognized fact in the development of animal life that as any part of the body falls into disuse it in time disappears. Good examples of this are the disappearance of powerful fangs from the mouth of man, the loss of power in the wings of barnyard fowls; and, _vice versa_, as new uses for a member arise, its structure changes to meet the new needs.
Essays: First Series, passage 419
4. What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which relume[279] a young world for me again? What is so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling? How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis vanish; all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
Essays: First Series, passage 157
There is one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated:--I mean Emanuel Swedenborg.[91] The most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could surmount.
Essays: First Series, passage 735
9. Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and properties of any other may be predicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city. That identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial life were not also natural.
Essays: First Series, passage 1175
[Footnote 231: Caratach (Caractacus) is a historical character in Fletcher's (1576-1625) tragedy of _Bonduca_(Boadicea).]
Essays: First Series, passage 1221
[Footnote 285: Muses. In classic mythology, the nine sisters who presided over music, poetry, art, and science. They were Clio the muse of history, Euterpe of music, especially the flute, Thalia of comedy, Melpomene of tragedy, Terpsichore of dancing, Erato of erotic poetry, mistress of the lyre, Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of astronomy, Calliope of eloquence and epic poetry.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1474
[Footnote 593: Scottish Minstrelsy. _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, a collection of original and collected poems, published by Sir Walter Scott in 1802.]
Essays: First Series, passage 779
The reality is more excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. The divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized.
Essays: First Series, passage 1132
"What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted." SHAKESPEARE, _II. Henry VI._, III. 2.
Essays: First Series, passage 1452
[Footnote 567: Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian poem which he followed in his _Troilus and Creseide_ to an unknown "Lollius of Urbino"; the source of the poem, however, is _Il Filostrato_, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned. Chaucer's poem is far more than a translation; more than half is entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded the French poets.]
Essays: First Series, passage 1002
The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal[715] memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful. It is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion.
Essays: First Series, passage 1362
[Footnote 467: It is a very onerous business, etc. One of Emerson's favorite passages in the essays of Montaigne, a French writer, was this: "Oh, how am I obliged to Almighty God, who has been pleased that I should immediately receive all I have from his bounty, and particularly reserved all my obligation to himself! How instantly do I beg of his holy compassion that I may never owe a real thanks to anyone. O happy liberty in which I have thus far lived! May it continue with me to the last. I endeavor to have no need of any one."
Essays: First Series, passage 723
Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with compunction; if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon.