The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays. 1st series

Front Cover
Houghton, Mifflin, 1903
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 54 - It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Page 429 - If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
Page 401 - By the struggling moonbeam's misty light And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him ; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.
Page 57 - A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
Page 69 - Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.
Page 49 - Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Selfreliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.
Page 67 - These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; they exist with God to-day.
Page 341 - 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.
Page 47 - A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. 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 connexion of events.
Page 427 - Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

Bibliographic information