Works, Volume 6Houghton Mifflin, 1888 |
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Æsop animal bad company beauty Beauty rides believe Ben Jonson better body born brain character cholera companions culture dæmon divine Dock Square draw eyes face fancy farm Fate feel force fortune freemason friends genius give Goethe habit hands heart heaven heroes horse human ical illusion impressionable intellect Julius Cæsar King labor limp band live look man's mankind manners Marcus Antoninus means meliorate mind moral myrmidons Nature never passion Pericles persons plant Plato Plutarch poet politics poor quadruped race RALPH WALDO EMERSON religion rich rule sciatica secret society solitude soul spare spend spirit stars strength sublime success talent things thou thought tion town tree truth universe virtue wealth whilst whole wise wish youth
Popular passages
Page 258 - HE who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Page 12 - The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda— these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity — expensive races — race living at the expense of race.
Page 157 - The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later. Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too early. In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem. I find, too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased...
Page 166 - When we reflect on their persuasive and cheering force; how they recommend, prepare, and draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners make the members ; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets ; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey; and what divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph,...
Page 236 - Mankind are very superficial and dastardly : they begin upon a .thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it discouraged : but they have capacities, if they would employ them..
Page 164 - There are certain manners which are learned in good society, of that force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning them • they solicit him to enter and possess.
Page 56 - All successful men have agreed in one thing, — they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.
Page 164 - The power of manners is incessant,- — an element as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a democracy, than in a kingdom. No man can resist their influence. There are certain manners...
Page 98 - I think sometimes, — could I only have music on my own terms ; — could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, — that were a bath and a medicine.
Page 39 - The first and worst races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. Liberation of the will from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is the end and aim of this world.