Emerson's Complete Works: Society and solitudeHoughton, Mifflin, 1883 |
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action affection answer appear beauty become begin better bring carry character child civil comes conversation courage eloquence exist experience face fact fear feel force friends genius give ground hands head hear heart higher hour human hundred importance keep knowledge labor land learning leave less live look manners master means ment mind moral Nature never opinion orator person plants play pleasure poet poetry political present respect rule seems seen sense society soul speak speech spirit stand street success talent tell things thought tion true truth turn universal wants wealth whilst whole wise wish young youth
Popular passages
Page 281 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower...
Page 316 - I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill, — at the end of life just ready to be born, — affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.
Page 168 - One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Page 177 - ... boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us, —some of them, — and are eager to give us a sign and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination, — not a...
Page 179 - Spaniards ; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost, — say, in England, all but Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, through the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds.
Page 177 - Thrace, — books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative, — books which are the work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, so nearly equal to the world which they paint, that, though one shuts them with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion from them to accuse his way of living.
Page 31 - You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe chopping upward chips from a beam. How awkward! at what disadvantage he works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble muscles but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick.
Page 33 - Still roll ; where all the aspects of misery Predominate; whose strong effects are such As he must bear, being powerless to redress; And that unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man...
Page 260 - Have the courage not to adopt another'? courage. There is scope and cause and resistance enough for us in our proper work and circumstance. And there is no creed of an honest man, be he Christian, Turk, or Gentoo, which does not equally preach it.
Page 64 - We are too much reminded of a medical experiment where a series of patients are taking nitrous-oxide gas. Each patient in turn exhibits similar symptoms, — redness in the face, volubility, violent gesticulation, delirious attitudes, occasional stamping, an alarming loss of perception of the passage of time, a selfish enjoyment of his sensations, and loss of perception of the sufferings of the audience. Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government,...