Emerson: And Other Essays

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C. Scribner's sons, 1898 - 247 pages
 

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Page 194 - Lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire, — Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — "When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory — to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die...
Page 77 - Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame; She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave: She stood Monadnoc's head. Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame; "Who telleth one of my meanings Is master of all I am.
Page 82 - DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
Page 8 - Books are the best of things, well used ; abused, among the worst. What is the right use ? What is the one end which all means go to effect ? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Page 9 - I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
Page 132 - Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : The genius, and the mortal instruments, Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.
Page 126 - With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out : And what love can do, that dares love attempt ; Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.
Page 8 - As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill.
Page 8 - The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around ; brooded thereon ; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life ; it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived actions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business ; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact ; now it is quick thought.
Page 9 - The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man.

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