Essays: First SeriesHoughton, Mifflin, 1876 - 290 pages |
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Page 15
... Who cares what the fact was , when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign ? London and Paris and New York must go the same way . cc What is His- tory , " said Napoleon , " but a fable HISTORY . 15.
... Who cares what the fact was , when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign ? London and Paris and New York must go the same way . cc What is His- tory , " said Napoleon , " but a fable HISTORY . 15.
Page 16
First Series Ralph Waldo Emerson. tory , " said Napoleon , " but a fable agreed upon ? " This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt , Greece , Gaul , England , War , Colonization , Church , Court , and Com- merce , as with so many ...
First Series Ralph Waldo Emerson. tory , " said Napoleon , " but a fable agreed upon ? " This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt , Greece , Gaul , England , War , Colonization , Church , Court , and Com- merce , as with so many ...
Page 19
... fables with one moral . Through the bruteness and toughness of matter , a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will . The adamant streams into soft but precise form before it , and whilst I look at it , its outline and texture are ...
... fables with one moral . Through the bruteness and toughness of matter , a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will . The adamant streams into soft but precise form before it , and whilst I look at it , its outline and texture are ...
Page 31
... fable of Æsop , of Homer , of Hafiz , of Ariosto , of Chaucer , of Scott , and verifies them with his own head and hands . The beautiful fables of the Greeks , being proper crea- tions of the imagination and not of the fancy , are uni ...
... fable of Æsop , of Homer , of Hafiz , of Ariosto , of Chaucer , of Scott , and verifies them with his own head and hands . The beautiful fables of the Greeks , being proper crea- tions of the imagination and not of the fancy , are uni ...
Page 32
... fable . I would it were ; but men and women are only half human . Ev- ery animal of the barn - yard , the field , and the forest , of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth , has contrived to get a footing and to leave the ...
... fable . I would it were ; but men and women are only half human . Ev- ery animal of the barn - yard , the field , and the forest , of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth , has contrived to get a footing and to leave the ...
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action affection appear beautiful soul beauty becomes behold better black event Bonduca Cæsar Calvinistic character conversation divine doctrine earth Egypt Epaminondas eternal evanescent experience fable fact fear feel friendship genius gifts give Greek hand heart heaven Heraclitus hour human instinct intellect Last Judgment less light ligion live look lose man's marriage mind moral nature never noble object ourselves OVER-SOUL paint pass passion perfect persons Petrarch Phidias Phocion Pindar Plato Plotinus Plutarch poet poetry proverb prudence Pyrrhonism relations religion Rome sculpture secret seek seems seen sense sensual sentiment Shakspeare society Sophocles soul speak Spinoza spirit stand star Stoicism sweet talent teach thee things thou thought tion to-day true truth universal virtue whilst whole wisdom wise words Xenophon youth
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.