Essays: First seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1876 - 343 pages |
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action affection appear beauty becomes behold better black event Bonduca Cæsar Calvinistic character conversation divine doctrine earth Egypt Epaminondas eternal evanescent experience fable fact fear feel friendship genius gifts give Greek hand heart heaven Heraclitus hour human instinct intellect less light ligion live look lose man's marriage mind moral nature never noble object ourselves OVER-SOUL paint pass passion perfect persons Petrarch Phidias Phocion Pindar Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry proverb prudence Pyrrhonism RALPH WALDO EMERSON relations religion Rome sculpture secret seek seems seen sense sensual sentiment Shakspeare society Sophocles soul speak Spinoza spirit stand star Stoicism sweet talent teach thee things thou thought tion to-day true truth universal virtue whilst whole wisdom wise words Xenophon youth
Popular passages
Page 52 - In your metaphysies you have denied personality to the Deity : yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Page 47 - Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Page 269 - God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, —most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation ; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain...
Page 44 - ... he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Page 45 - Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
Page 57 - ... of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed.
Page 69 - I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows.
Page 50 - If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
Page 153 - 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 100 - Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue ; no penalty to wisdom ; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world ; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.