The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, 2d seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1876 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action animal Antinomians appear beauty begin to hope believe Brook Farm Cæsar character church conversation Dæmon divine earth Emerson England essay Eumenides experience expression eyes fact faith fancy fashion feel flowers force Fruitlands genius gentleman gift give gods heart heaven Heracleitus hour individual intellect James Naylor John Sterling labor Lectures and Biographical live look Lord man's manners ment Midianites mind moral morning natura naturans nature never NOMINALIST numbers object party passage persons philosophy phrenology Plato Plotinus Plutarch Poems poet poetry politics poor present Proclus Pythagoras RALPH WALDO EMERSON reform religion rich secret seems sense sentiment society soul speak spirit stand stars symbol talent thee things thou thought tion truth universal virtue whilst whole wise wonder words write
Popular passages
Page 216 - We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy.
Page 332 - Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb For his rhyme. "Pass in, pass in," the angels say, "In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.
Page 34 - Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. For all symbols are fluxional ; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.
Page 6 - The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.
Page 42 - And this is the reward ; that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome to thy invulnerable essence.
Page 9 - For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, — a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
Page 32 - The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British bards had for the title of their order, "Those who are free throughout the world." They are free, and they make free. An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward when we arrive at the precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.
Page 162 - We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence I think is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported...
Page 250 - The ox must be taken from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insect world was to be defended — that had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs and mosquitoes was to be incorporated without delay.
Page 6 - Yet, in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech.