The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature addresses and lectures |
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action affections American appears beauty become better body born called cause character church cities comes difference divine doctrine Emerson Essays exist experience expression fact faith feel follow genius give hands heart hope hour human ideas individual intellect Journal knowledge labor land leaves lectures less light live look manner matter means mind moral nature never objects once Page pass persons Phi Beta Kappa philosophy plant Poems poet present reason reform relation religion scholar seems seen sense sentiment side society soul speak spirit stand stars things thought tion trade true truth ture universal virtue whilst whole wish writing young
Popular passages
Page 428 - For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul: or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul,
Page 425 - Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads ; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
Page 110 - If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Page 111 - I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia ; what is Greek art, or Proven9al minstrelsy ; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low.
Page 82 - 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.
Page 17 - Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
Page 24 - The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth and goodness and beauty 'are but different faces of the same All.
Page 103 - ... learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in crowded cities find true for them also.
Page 4 - Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, Nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is Nature ? All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of Nature.
Page 417 - Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature addresses and lectures Volume 1 of The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Waldo Emerson |
| Author | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Editor | Edward Waldo Emerson |
| Contributor | Edward Waldo Emerson |
| Publisher | Houghton, Mifflin, 1903 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 18 Jul 2007 |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |