The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life

Front Cover
Houghton, Mifflin, 1904
 

Contents

I
1
II
51
III
83
IV
129
V
166
VI
199
VII
243
VIII
278
IX
307
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Page 402 - As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And...
Page 404 - But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover ; and attired With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired...
Page 409 - But, laying hands on another, To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim For eternal years in debt. To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust. Trump of their rescue, sound ! Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim.
Page 424 - Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature.
Page 396 - 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 388 - Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round ; In vain produced, all rays return ; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
Page 273 - HE who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Page 329 - I hearing get, who had but ears, And sight, who had but eyes before; I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.
Page 408 - O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red, All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.
Page 406 - ... saw them pass, In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue. And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name; — Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look: — Him by the hand dear Nature took; Dearest Nature, strong and kind. Whispered, 'Darling, never mind!...

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