Emerson's Complete Works: Essays. 2d seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1883 |
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action animal antinomianism appears beauty begin to hope believe character church cial concert conversation dæmon divine ence equal Eumenides experience express eyes fact faith false relations fancy fashion feel flower force genius gentleman gift give Greek hand heart heaven hour human ility individual intellect Julius Cæsar Laban labor leave live look man's manner marriage men of valor Mencius ment mind moral namely nature never NOMINALIST numbers object opinion party persons Philip of Macedon phrenology plant Plato Plutarch poet politics poor present Proclus reform relations religion rich secret seems sense sentiment skepticism society soul speak speech spirit stand stars symbol talent things thou thought tion true romance truth ture universe virtue whilst whole wise wish wonderful words
Popular passages
Page 37 - But the quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet did not stop at the color or the form, but read their meaning ; neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought.
Page 32 - ... advantage they won, by a dissipation and deterioration. But never can any advantage be taken of nature by a trick. The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the Creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body.
Page 22 - ... of thought. The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. Small and mean things serve as well as great symbols. The meaner the type by which a '' law is expressed, the more pungent it is, and the I more lasting in the memories of men ; just as we choose the smallest box or case in which any needful utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind...
Page 31 - The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar.
Page 18 - Things admit of being used as symbols, because nature is a symbol, in the whole and in every part.
Page 223 - We are students of words : we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms.
Page 25 - As the eyes of Lyncseus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.
Page 31 - These are auxiliaries to the centrifugal tendency of a man, to his passage out into free space, and they help him to escape the custody of that body in which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard of individual relations in which he is enclosed.
Page 22 - ... the distinctions which we make in events, and in affairs, of low and high, honest and base, disappear when nature is used as a symbol.
Page 240 - ... performances. As every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior society, wishes to be convicted of his error and to come to himself, — so he wishes that the same healing should not stop in his thought, but should penetrate his will or active power. The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from -whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.