Transcendentalism: And Other AddressesJohn B. Alden, 1886 - 103 pages |
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Transcendentalism: And Other Addresses - Primary Source Edition Ralph Waldo Emerson No preview available - 2014 |
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absurd affections answer appear appetite atheism beauty believe better Bible body character Christ Christian church command concert conscience cultivated denied divine doctrine doubt duty ence equal evil excommunicate existence expediency faith false fear feel friends genius give Greek habit happiness HARVARD COLLEGE heart heaven holy human ical ideas Iliad infidelity influence inquiry inspiration institutions intel intellect interest ious justice laws lead lect live Lord's prayer man's marriage matter ment mind miracles moral natural love never obey perfect persons phalanx philosophy Plato preacher principles Puritans question race RALPH WALDO EMERSON reason reform relation religion religious renounce revelation reward rule Sabbath seek seems sense sensual sentiment social society soul speak spirit sublime teach theology things thought tion Transcendentalism true truth universal Utopia vidual virtue wonder word worship wrong
Popular passages
Page 31 - Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.
Page 88 - There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man.
Page 84 - Character is always known. Thefts never enrich ; alms never impoverish murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie, — for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance, — will instantly vitiate, the effect. But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance.
Page 80 - That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are. is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Page 102 - Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new.
Page 87 - The doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now he is an appendage, a nuisance. And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul.
Page 81 - The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn.
Page 75 - Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.
Page 85 - Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries ; his being shrinks out of all remote channels ; he becomes less and less, — a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The perception of this law of laws always awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness.
Page 83 - These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted.