The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, 2d seriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1876 - American essays |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action animal Antinomians appear bad neighbors beauty begin to hope believe Biographical Sketches Brook Farm 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 heart heaven Heracleitus hour individual intellect James Naylor John Sterling labor Lectures and Biographical live look Lord man's manners ment 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 things thou thought tion truth universal verse virtue whilst whole wise wonder words write
Popular passages
Page 326 - 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 18 - The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue into every dumb and inanimate object. He perceives the independence of the thought on the symbol, the stability of the thought, the accidency and fugacity of the symbol...
Page 4 - Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him, and his own, patent.
Page 169 - I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities, behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.
Page 314 - Tis the finest sense Of justice which the human mind can frame, Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, And guard the way of life from all offence Suffered or done.
Page 85 - CHARACTER The sun set; but set not his hope: Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye: And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of time. He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again: His action won such reverence sweet, As hid all measure of the feat...
Page 158 - 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 48 - Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-coloured lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.
Page 202 - Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick...
Page 12 - Every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For of the soul the body form doth take : For soul is form, and doth the body make.