Miscellanies, Embracing Nature, Addresses, and LecturesTicknor and Fields, 1866 - 383 pages |
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action alembic appears astronomy beauty become behold better born character church comes conservatism divine doctrine earth effeminacy Emanuel Swedenborg Epaminondas eternal exist fact faculties faith fear feel genius give Goethe Greece heart heaven honor hope hour human idea ideal theory inspiration intellect justice justice and truth labor land light live look mankind means melan ment mind moral nature never noble numbers objects persons philosophy Pindar plant Plato Plotinus poet poetry reason reform relation religion rich Rome Saturn scholar seems sense sentiment shines society solitude soul speak spirit stand stars sublime things thou thought tion to-day trade Transcendental Transcendentalist true truth ture universal Uranus virtue whilst whole wisdom wise wish words worship Xenophanes youth Zoroaster
Popular passages
Page 54 - I was there ; when he set a compass upon the face of the depth ; when he established the clouds above ; when he strengthened the fountains of the deep ; when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment ; when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by him, as one brought up with him ; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him...
Page 106 - I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of ? The meal in the firkin ; the milk in the pan ; the ballad in the street ; the news of the boat ; the glance of the eye ; the form and the gait of the body...
Page 86 - The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward; the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead; man hopes; genius creates.
Page 111 - We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy around all.
Page 99 - ... to have recorded that, which men in crowded cities find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, — his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, — until he finds that he is the complement -of his hearers ; that they drink his words because he fulfils for them their own nature ; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable, most public, and universally true.
Page 96 - The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.
Page 7 - In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of
Page 86 - 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. 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.
Page 84 - Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.
Page 30 - The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass.