Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1838-1841

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Houghton Mifflin, 1911
Designed by Bruce Rogers. 1. 1820-1824 -- 2. 1824-1832 -- 3. 1833-1835 -- 4. 1836-1838 -- 5. 1838-1841 -- 6. 1841-1844 -- 7. 1845-1848 -- 8. 1849-1855 -- 9. 1856-1863 -- 10. 1864-1876.
 

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Page 217 - Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many...
Page 251 - We are students of words : we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms.
Page 420 - The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences. I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the language of conversation transferred to a book. Cut these words and they would bleed ; they are vascular and alive.
Page 71 - Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the king's seed, and of the princes; 4 Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.
Page 207 - If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New...
Page 460 - But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false.
Page 184 - Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.
Page 20 - Trust in the LORD with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own understanding; In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
Page 40 - One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good Than all the sages can.
Page 473 - I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons. I have not yet conquered my own house. It irks and repents me. Shall I raise the siege of this hencoop, and march baffled away to a pretended siege of Babylon?

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