Representative Men: Seven Lectures

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H.G. Bohn, 1850 - 143 pages
 

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Page 3 - He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Page 52 - The loyalty, well held to fools, does make Our faith mere folly: — Yet he that can endure To follow with allegiance a fallen lord, Does conquer him that did his master conquer, And earns a place i
Page 27 - Philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world.
Page 162 - The air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent.
Page 175 - Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book ; a personality •which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise; holding things because they are things.
Page 147 - I ordered Kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse;' and with these he separated the six thousand Hungarian grenadiers before the very eyes of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and I have observed that it is always these quarters of an hour that decide the fate of a battle.
Page 5 - ... are yet used by our arts ! The mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. It would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the day in human shape.
Page 92 - Wer nicht liebt wein, weib, und gesang, Der bleibt ein narr sein leben lang ;-' and when he advised a young scholar perplexed with fore-ordination and free-will, to get well drunk.
Page 177 - He has no aims less large than the conquest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be his portion: a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed; of a stoical selfcommand and self-denial, and having one test for all men, — What can you teach me? All possessions are valued by him for that only; rank, privileges, health, time, being itself. He is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts, and sciences, and events; artistic, but not artist; spiritual, but not spiritualist.
Page 127 - What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel, Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

About the author (1850)

Known primarily as the leader of the philosophical movement transcendentalism, which stresses the ties of humans to nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet and essayist, was born in Boston in 1803. From a long line of religious leaders, Emerson became the minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) in 1829. He left the church in 1832 because of profound differences in interpretation and doubts about church doctrine. He visited England and met with British writers and philosophers. It was during this first excursion abroad that Emerson formulated his ideas for Self-Reliance. He returned to the United States in 1833 and settled in Concord, Massachusetts. He began lecturing in Boston. His first book, Nature (1836), published anonymously, detailed his belief and has come to be regarded as his most significant original work on the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism. The first volume of Essays (1841) contained some of Emerson's most popular works, including the renowned Self-Reliance. Emerson befriended and influenced a number of American authors including Henry David Thoreau. It was Emerson's practice of keeping a journal that inspired Thoreau to do the same and set the stage for Thoreau's experiences at Walden Pond. Emerson married twice (his first wife Ellen died in 1831 of tuberculosis) and had four children (two boys and two girls) with his second wife, Lydia. His first born, Waldo, died at age six. Emerson died in Concord on April 27, 1882 at the age of 78 due to pneumonia and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

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