The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Lectures and biographical sketchesHoughton, Mifflin and Company, 1911 |
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Common terms and phrases
action animal aristocracy beauty believe better born Boston boys Brook Farm called Carlyle character church Concord conversation Dæmon delight Demonology divine dreams duty Emerson England essay eternal ethics eyes F. B. Sanborn fact feel force friends genius give Goethe Greek heart Heaven Henry Thoreau hero honor human inspired intellect journal knew labor lative laws lecture live look manners Margaret Fuller Massachusetts means ment mind moral Nature never noble Old North Bridge opinion passage persons Pindar Plato Plotinus Plutarch poem poet poetry Ralph Waldo Emerson religion religious Ripley Samuel Hoar scholar secret seems sense sentiment society soul speak speech spirit superlative talent teach Theodore Parker things Thoreau thought tion true truth universal virtue whilst wise wish words writing wrote young youth
Popular passages
Page 437 - I hearing get, who had but ears, And sight, who had but eyes before; I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.
Page 525 - ... learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in crowded cities find true for them also.
Page 518 - Yourself a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.
Page 442 - The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.
Page 511 - He spoke of miracles ; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression ; it is Monster.
Page 302 - Perhaps they only agreed in having fallen upon Coleridge and Wordsworth and Goethe, then on Carlyle, with pleasure and sympathy. Otherwise, their education and reading were not marked, but had the American superficialness, and their studies were solitary. I suppose all of them were surprised at this rumor of a school or sect, and certainly at the name of Transcendentalism, given nobody knows by whom, or when it was first applied. As these persons became in the common chances of society acquainted...
Page 518 - ... over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. Not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each family in your parish connection, — when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a divine man ; be to them thought and virtue ; let their timid aspirations find in you a friend ; let their trampled instincts be genially tempted out in your atmosphere ; let their doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you have...
Page 481 - So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can...
Page 571 - Folk say, a wizard to a northern king, At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, That through one window men beheld the spring, And through another saw the summer glow, And through a third the fruited vines arow, While still, unheard, but in its wonted way, Piped the drear wind of that December day.
Page 495 - We fall by course of Nature's law, not force Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou Hast sifted well the atom-universe ; But for this reason, that thou art the King, And only blind from sheer supremacy, One avenue was shaded from thine eyes, Through which I wandered to eternal truth.