Essays: First Series |
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action affection already appear beauty becomes behold believe better body cause character child circumstance comes common conversation divine draw earth eternal exists experience expression face fact fall fear feel force friendship genius give hand hear heart highest hope hour human imagination individual intellect leave less light live look lose man's manner mean meet mind moral nature never object once organs paint particular pass past perfect persons poet present prudence reason relations secret seek seems seen sense side society soul speak spirit stand sweet teach thee things thou thought tion true truth universal virtue whilst whole wisdom wise write young
Popular passages
Page 215 - ... of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.
Page 214 - ... that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other...
Page 282 - Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Page 58 - Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away,— means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour.
Page 269 - God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but ho shuts the door of truth.
Page 216 - God comes to see us without bell:" that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to all the attributes of God.
Page 96 - Always some damning circumstance transpires. The laws and substances of nature, water, snow, wind, gravitation, become penalties to the thief. On the other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns...
Page 58 - ... notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.' The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.
Page 59 - But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Page 72 - Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Essays: First Series |
| Author | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Publisher | Houghton, Mifflin, 1876 |
| Length | 290 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |