RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

Let the glory of the world go where it will, the mind has its own glory. what it doth, endures. No man can serve many masters. And often the choice is not given you between greatness in the world and greatness of soul which you will choose, but both advantages are not compatible. The night is fine; the stars shed down their severe influences upon me and I feel a joy in my solitude that the merriment of vulgar society can never communicate. There is a pleasure in the thought that the particular tone of my mind at this moment may be new in the Universe; that the emotions of this hour may be peculiar and unexampled in the whole eternity of moral being. I lead a new life. I occupy new ground in the world of spirits, untenanted before. I commerce a career of thought and action which is expanding before me into a distant and dazzling infinity. Strange thoughts start up like angels in my way and beckon me onward. I doubt not I tread on the highway that leads to the Divinity. And why shall I not be content with these thoughts and this being which give a majesty to my nature and forego the ambition to shine in the frivolous assemblies of men where the genuine objects of my ambition are not revered or known?Emerson, Journal entry, January 1827

Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother. A man may die by a fever as well as by consumption, and religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.Emerson

Every Sunday ever since they were born this congregation have heard tell of salvation, and of going to the door of Heaven and knocking, and being answered from within, "Depart, I never knew you," and of being sent away to eternal ruin. What hinders that, instead of this parable, the naked fact be stated to them? namely that as long [as] they offend against their conscience they will seek to be happy, but they shall not be able, they shall not come to any true knowledge of God, they shall be avoided by good and wise men, they shall become worse and worse.Emerson, Journal Entry, October 10, 1833

An impulse as irresistible as is the acorn to germinate is in the soul of the prophet to speak.Emerson, Journal Entry, October 20, 1833

By going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books. He will come to hear God speak as audibly through his own lips as ever He did by the mouth of Moses or Isaiah or Milton.Emerson, Journal Entry, October 21, 1833

I found when I had finished my new lecture that it was a very good house, only the architect had unfortunately omitted the stairs.Emerson, Journal Entry, December 18, 1850

It seems to me that the perspective of time, as it sets everything in the right point of view, does the same by Christianity. We learn to look at it now as a part of the history of the world, to see how it rests in the broad basis of man's moral nature, and is not itself that basis. I cannot but think that Jesus Christ will be better loved by being less adored. He has had an unnatural, an artificial place for ages in human opinions — a place too high for love. There is a recoil of the affections from all authority and force. To the barbarous state of society it was thought to add to the dignity of Christ to make him king, to make him God. Now that the scriptures are read with purged eyes, it is seen that he is only to be loved for so much goodness and wisdom as was in him, which are the only things for which a sound human mind can love any person. As the world waxes wiser, he will be more truly venerated for the splendor of the contrast of his character to the opinions and practices of his age, he will attract the unfeigned love of all to whom moral nature is dear because he planted himself in the face of the world upon that sole ground, showing that noble confidence in the reality and superiority of spiritual truths, that simplicity and at the same time enthusiasm in declaring them which is itself one of the highest merits and gives confidence to all thinkers that come after.Emerson, Journal Entry, October 21, 1833

Bacon said man is the minister and interpreter of nature: he is so in more respects than one. He is not only to explain the sense of each passage, but the scope and argument of the whole book.Emerson, Journal Entry, November 1, 1833

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.Emerson, “Compensation”

He is a poor writer who does not teach courage of treatment.Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks., Volume 1, p. 376

Nature herself was in a hurry with these hasters and never finished one.Emerson, describing the American, Journal entry, June 27, 1847

If the single man plants himself indomitably upon his instincts, and there abides, the huge world will come round to him.Emerson, quoted in Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him. Emerson

Let us treat the men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.Ralph Waldo Emerson, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 102

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. Emerson, Journals, 1824

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Emerson

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. Emerson

The only way to have a friend is to be one. Emerson

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter. Emerson

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem. Emerson

Be not the slave of your own past.Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. Emerson

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Emerson

As we grow old … the beauty steals inward. Emerson

It is one of the felicities of literary history, the tie which inseparably couples these two names [Montaigne and Plutarch] across fourteen centuries. Montaigne, whilst he grasps Étienne de la Boétie with one hand, reaches back the other to Plutarch. These distant friendships charm us, and honor all the parties, and make the best example of the universal citizenship and fraternity of the human mind.Emerson, Introduction to Plutarch’s Moralia

The plain-speaking of Plutarch, as of the ancient writers generally, coming from the habit of writing for one sex only, has a great gain for brevity, and, in our new tendencies of civilization, may tend to correct a false delicacy.Emerson, Introduction to Plutarch’s Moralia

If Homer is that man he is taken for, he has not yet done his office when he has educated the learned of Europe for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall avail him nothing.Emerson, The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964), Volume 2, p. 260

I have reached the middle age of man; yet I believe I am not less glad or sanguine at the meeting of scholars, than when, a boy, I first saw the graduates of my own College assembled at their anniversary. Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men's aspirations only point.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

Things must take my scale, not I theirs.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

The resources of the scholar are co-extensive with nature and truth, yet can never be his, unless claimed by him with an equal greatness of mind. He cannot know them until he has beheld with awe the infinitude and impersonality of the intellectual power. When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but that it is the soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and the immortal bards of philosophy, — that which they have written out with patient courage, makes me bold. No more will I dismiss, with haste, the visions which flash and sparkle across my sky; but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, brood on them, and draw out of the past, genuine life for the present hour.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

The vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. Out of this must all that is alive and genial in thought go. Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.Emerson, “Literary Ethics”

Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890)http://books.google.com/books?id=SEFIAAAAIAAJ

The moment you putty and plaster your expressions to make them hang together, you have begun a weakening process. Take it for granted the truths will harmonize; and as for the falsities and mistakes, they will speedily die of themselves.Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 23

You must know about ownership in facts. What another sees and tells you is not yours, but his.Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 27

There is a great secret in knowing what to keep out of the mind as well as what to put in.Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 29

You cannot make too much of yourself. It is all there is of you. How many do you know who are made up mainly of fragments of others? But follow your own star, and it will lead you to that which none other can attain. Imitation is suicide. You must take yourself for better or for worse as your portion. A man can only get an extemporized half-possession of another's gift; and what came wholly natural from him has, in spite of the best grace and skill, an impertinent air from the borrower.Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 30

I commiserate any one who is subject to the misery of being overplaced. What he is stands over him and thunders, and denies what he says.Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 30

Yield not one inch to all the forces which conspire to make you an echo. That is the sin of dogmatism and creeds. Avoid them; they build a fence about the intellect .Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 30

JournalsVolume 3: http://books.google.com/books?id=2EsMAAAAYAAJ Volume 4: http://books.google.com/books?id=nJdaAAAAMAAJ Volume 5: http://books.google.com/books?id=6CkAAAAAYAAJ Volume 6: http://books.google.com/books?id=nJdaAAAAMAAJ Volume 7: http://books.google.com/books?id=54kMAAAAYAAJ Volume 8: http://books.google.com/books?id=ADNQBCGQxloC

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

When I see my friend after a long time, my first question is, Has anything become clear to you?Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

At the Opera I think I see the fine gates open which are at all times closed, and that to-morrow I shall find free and varied expression. But to-morrow I am mute as yesterday.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

Expression is all we want: not knowledge, but vent: we know enough; but have not leaves and lungs enough for a healthy perspiration and growth.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

Our virtues, too, are in conspiracy against grandeur, and are narrowing.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

In Carlyle, as in Byron, one is more struck with the rhetoric than with the matter. He has manly superiority rather than intellectuality, and so makes good hard hits all the time. There is more character than intellect in every sentence, herein strongly resembling Samuel Johnson.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

My only secret was that all men were my masters; I never saw one who was not my superior, and I would so gladly have been his apprentice if his craft had been communicable.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

Eager, solicitous, hungry, rabid, busy-bodied America attempting many things, vain, ambitious to feel thy own existence, and convince others of thy talent, by attempting and hastily accomplishing much; yes, catch thy breath and correct thyself, and failing here, prosper out there; speed and fever are never greatness; but reliance and serenity and waiting.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

It seems often as if rejection, sturdy rejection were for us: choose well your part, stand fast by your task, and let all else go to ruin if it will. Then instantly the malicious world changes itself into one wide snare or temptation,—escape it who can.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

Worship of the dollar. ... Channing proposed that there should be a magnified dollar, say as big as a barrel-head, made of silver or gold, in each villageEmerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

I cannot live as you do. It is only by a most exact husbandry of my resources that I am anybody.Emerson, Journal entry May 24, 1847

You shall not tell me that your house is of importance in the commercial world. You shall not tell me that you have learned to know men. You shall make me feel that. Else your saying so unsays it.Emerson, Journal

You shall not tell me what books you have read by naming their titles, but only through showing me your better information and richer thought.Emerson, Journal

Conformity is the ape of harmony.Emerson, Journal Entry, May 10, 1840

You must never lose sight of the purpose of helping a particular person in every word you say.Emerson, Journal entry dated December 28, 1834 (ISBN 1408607255, p. 420)

A critic pronounced that Wordsworth was a good man, but no poet. “Ah!” said one present, “you know not how much poetry there is in goodness!”Emerson, Journal entry dated December 29, 1834 (ISBN 1408607255, p. 421)

Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.Emerson, Journal entry December 8, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, p. 389

Because God has made you capable of Reason, therefore must I hear and accept all your selfish railing, your proven falsehoods, your unconsidered guesses as truth? No; I appeal from you to your Reason, which, with me, condemns you. ... It amounts to this: “Every man's Reason can show him what is right. Therefore every man says what is right, whether he use his Reason or no.” I hate this fallacy the more that it is, beside being dire nonsense, a profanation of the dearest truths.Emerson, Journal entry December 8, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, pp. 389-390, ellipsis in original

Democracy, Freedom, has its root in the sacred truth that every man hath in him the divine Reason, or that, though few men since the creation of the world live according to the dictates of Reason, yet all men are created capable of so doing. That is the equality and the only equality of all men.Emerson, Journal entry December 8, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, p. 390

Whosoever therefore apprehends the infinite,—and every man can,—brings all worth and significance into that spot of space where he stands, though it be a ditch, a potato-field, a work-bench. ... And therefore also is it that every good sentence seems to imply all truth.Emerson, Journal entry December 22, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, pp. 402-403

Once read, he is but half read.Emerson, describing reading Carlyle, Journal entry dated March 19, 1837, Journals (1911), Volume 4, p. 193

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.Emerson, Journals (1911), Volume 4, p.282

It takes a great deal of elevation of thought to produce a very little elevation of life.Emerson, Journal Entry, May 5, 1838, Journals (1910), vol. 4, p. 441

We do not see that what we call Church, State, School, are only ideas embodied which have succeeded to other ideas and must give place hereafter to new.Emerson, Journal entry November 17, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 333

Temperance.—Who argues so sourly for beef and mutton against the man of herbs and grains? The fat and ruddy eater who hath just wiped his lips from feeding on a sirloin, whose blood is spouting in his veins, and whose strength kindles that evil fire in his eye. It is not then the voice of man that I hear, but it is the beef and brandy that roar and rail for beef and brandy. But shall these play the judge in their own cause?Emerson, Journal entry November 17, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 333

People imagine that the place which the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. It owes it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book.Emerson, Journal entry November 17, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 335

Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act. Men of genius are said to partake of the masculine and feminine traits.Emerson, Journal entry November 17, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 335

It is the necessity of my nature to shed all influences.Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 355

My thoughts are too short, as they say my sentences are. I step along from stone to stone over the Lethe which gurgles around my path, but the odds are that my companion encounters me just as I leave one stone and before my foot has well reached the other, and down I tumble into Lethe water.Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 355

In my dream I saw a man reading in the Library at Cambridge, and one who stood by said, “He readeth advertisements,” meaning that he read for the market only, and not for truth. Then I said, Do I read advertisements?Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 356

If we have seen that under our ridiculous routine of selfish trade and government bloomed unhurt the life of God, and found ever and anon vent in our consciousness and in our action, that we have not set ourselves systematically and invariably to stifle it, and so kill ourselves, but in sane moments have opened it a passage into the laws and institutions, have let our private bark follow the course of the river, and be blown in the path of the monsoon, have not selected for honour the mean and the dead in whom no virtue lived, and such therefore as honour could not cleanse or great aims enliven, but have let our votes follow Ideas, and our elections express our character and aspiration, so that the highest sentiment cheered us in the assembly of the people, and the ballot was a voice of truth and veneration,—then the State will stand, then the Laws will be memorable and beautiful for long thousands of years,— will shine by intrinsic light as easily through many as through a few ages. Should not a man be ennobled by his vote ? Is it not a prayer ? Now he and his candidate are both degraded.Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 357 (cf. , “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 245)

Economy must be poetical, inventive, alive: that is its essence, and therein is it distinguished from mere parsimony.Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 359

Love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men.Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 359

We are to write on this topic not by black art of any kind, not by trick, or journey work, or direction; not stimulated by strong waters, or by fashion, or by praise, or money, but feeling the power of the Past Ages laid on our hand. We are to stand all-related, all accomplished, having covenanted with truth that we will bear witness for it, though by our silence.Emerson, Journal entry December 24, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 360

The whole world travails to ripen and bear the sufficiency of one man.Emerson, Journal entry December 26, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 3

The wise man … needs no bribe or feast or palace to draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He angles with himself and with no other bait.Emerson, Journal entry December 26, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 360-361, also in “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 243

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.Emerson, Journal entry December 26, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 361

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.Emerson, Journal entry November 22, 1841, Journals (1911), Volume 6, p. 132

If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “God,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.Emerson, Journal entry June 15, 1844, Journals (1911), Volume 6, p. 526

Beauty belongs to the sentiment and is always departing from those who depart out of that.Emerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 42

The hero … will brave all mankind just as readily as a single enemy at the call of that private and perfect Right of Beauty in which he lives.Emerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 42

The solitude of the body is the populousness of the soul.Emerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 45

… to hide now, that we may draw the more admiration anonEmerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 45

You are to have a self-support which maintains you not only against all others, but against your own skepticism.Emerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 46

It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.Emerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 46

Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale—who writes always to the unknown friend.Emerson, Journal entry dated April 19, 1848, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 440

Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the reader,—has decided his way of life. The reading of voyages and travels has waked the boys ambition and curiosity, and made him a sailor and an explorer of new countries all his life, a powerful merchant, a good soldier, a pure patriot, a successful student of science.Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1854-1861 (1978), Volume 14, p. 118

Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, W. Gilman, ed., vol. 2, p. 219

… withered people with gold-filled teeth, ghastly, and with minds in the same dilapidated condition, drugged with books for want of wisdomEmerson, Journal entry July 21, 1850, Journals (1912), Volume 8, p. 120

Men as naturally make a state as caterpillars a web.Emerson, Journal entry July 21, 1850, Journals (1912), Volume 8, p. 120

Letters

When I took my book to the woods I found nature not half poetical, not half visionary, enough. ... I found that I had only transplanted into the new place my entire personal identity, and was grievously disappointed.Emerson, Letter dated June 8, 1823

It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other; and having exhausted that cup of enchantment we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again.Emerson, Letter to Sam Ward, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, E. Tilton, ed. (1990), Volume 7, p. 393

Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living, it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could: some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a, moment on the rotten yesterdays.Emerson, Letter to his daughter, cited in Poems and Essays, G. Browne, ed. (1897), p. 74, footnote

They are bent on popular actions. I am, in all my theory, ethics, and politics, a poet; and of no more use in their New York than a rainbow or a firefly.Emerson, describing Horace Greeley and Albert Brisbane Letter to his daughter Lidian, March 1, 1842, cited in J. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1887), vol. 2, pp. 489-490

They fasten me in their thought to “Transcendentalism,” whereof you know I am wholly guiltless, and which is spoken of as a known and fixed element, like salt or meal. So that I have to begin by endless disclaimers and explanations: “ I am not the man you take me for.”Emerson, Letter to his daughter Lidian, March 1, 1842, cited in J. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1887), vol. 2, p. 490

One of these days shall we not have new laws forbidding solitude, and severe penalties on all separatists and unsocial thinkers?Emerson, Letter to his daughter Lidian, March 1, 1842, cited in J. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1887), vol. 2, p. 490

Early Lectureshttp://www.rwe.org/

“The Head”

For practical rules for the culture of the intellect perhaps none can be given that are good for all but there are two expedients that may do such good service to very many young men that I will venture to name them. One is, sit alone. In your arrangements for your residence see that you have a chamber to youself, though you sell your coat and wear a blanket. The other is, keep a journal. Pay so much honor to the visits of Truth to your mind as to record those thoughts that have shone therein. I suppose every lover of truth would find his about in it if he never had two related thoughts without putting them down. It is not for what is recorded, though that may be the argreeable entertainment of later years, and the pleasant remembrances of what we were, but for the habit of rendering account to yourself of yourself in some more rigorous manner and at more certain intervals than mere conversation of casual reverie of solitude require.Emerson, “The Head,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Politics”

The appearance of character rebukes the state. It makes the state unnecessary. It leaves the ambitious statesmen far below. The wise man is the state.Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 243

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking—he gets thought where the bookmaker got it; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 243

It is plain that where a good man is set to do a public act he should occupy himself only with the measure, not with the opinion of the people. By directing all his understanding and affection on the fact, and not allowing the people or their enemies to arrest it, he is able to make his hands meet to come at his end. But when the eye of the political agent veers too frequently from the measure to the opinion of the people, and in course of time fastens on opinion mainly,—he must lose just so much steadiness of conduct and therewith so much success.Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 244

In this country there is no measure attempted for itself by legislatures, but the opinion of the people is courted in the first place, and the measures are perfunctorily carried through as secondary. Instead of character there is a studious exclusion of character.Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 244

We see that Mr. A will deliver an oration of the Fourth of July and Mr. B before the Merchants or the Farmers and we do not go because we know that these gentleman will not communication their own character and being to the audience. A speech ought to be a man:—the heart and soul of the speaker made manifest:—but our speeches are screens and escapades, and not communications. The people are feared and flattered. They are not reprimanded. The country is governed in bar-rooms and in the mind of bar-rooms. The low can best win the low and each aspirant vies with the other which can stoop lowest, depart widest from himself.Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 244

It is the privilege of this Idea of the all-sufficiency of private character that it is never absent, that it is never reduced to wait for means. Its kingdom begins with the perception of it. It needs no crusade against the state but the simple abstinence from participating in its wrong deed.Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 245

Nature (1836)Complete Works (1883), Volume 1http://books.google.com/books?id=wWI4AAAAYAAJ

What we are, that only can we see.Emerson, Nature, Complete Works (1883), Volume 1, p. 79

Addresses and LecturesComplete Works (1883), Volume 1http://books.google.com/books?id=wWI4AAAAYAAJ

“The American Scholar”

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 85

The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer instead of Man on the farm. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 85

The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 85

Nature is the opposite [i.e. complement] of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. ... The ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 88

Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 89

It depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 89

As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventionalEmerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, pp. 89-90

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 90

Hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 90

The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 90

Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 90

Instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution...Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 91

I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 91

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 91

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they,—let us hold by this. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 91

There is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 92

A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 99

The scholar loses no hour which the man lives.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 100

There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. … Only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 100

His [the scholar’s] duties may all be comprised in self-trust.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 101

In the long period of his preparation, he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able, who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how often! poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own; and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history.Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, pp. 101-102

Is it not the chief disgrace in the world not to be a unit, not to be reckoned one character, not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred or the thousand of the party, the section, to which we belong?Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 114

“The Method of Nature”

Talent finds its models, methods, and ends, in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.Emerson, “The Method of Nature,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 207

Nature is a mute, and man, her articulate, speaking brother, lo! he also is a mute. Yet when Genius arrives, its speech is like a river.Emerson, “The Method of Nature,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 208

Essays, First Series (1841)Complete Works (1883), Volume 2http://books.google.com/books?id=vmQ4AAAAYAAJ

“History”

The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary.Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 13

The world exists for the education of each man.Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 14

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance.Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 17-18

He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London, to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have any thing to say to him he will try the case; if not, let them forever be silent.Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 14

“Self-Reliance”

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 47

To believe your own thought; to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 47

The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they, thought. Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 47

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his. Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 47-48

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 48

... imitation is suicide.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 48

The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 48

Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron strain.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 49

Accept the place that divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying the perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated in their hearts...Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 49

What pretty oracles natures yield us on this text in the behavior of children... Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered... Infancy conforms to nobody.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 49-50

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one is the healthy attitude of human nature.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 50

Independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits in the swift summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests. He gives an independent, genuine verdict.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 50-51

But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. ... Ah that he could pass again into his neutrality! He who can thus avoid all pledges and, having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs which ... would sink like darts into the ear of mean and put them in fear.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 51

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 51

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 51

The virtue in most request is conformity.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 51

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist... must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 51-52

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 52

I remember an answer which, when quite young, I was prompted to make to a valued advisor who was wont to importune me with the dual doctrines of the Church. On my saying “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” My friend suggested “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied “They do not seem to me to be such, but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. ... The only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 52

A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 52

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 52

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 52

If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? … Thy love afar is spite at home.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 53

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 53

Your truth must have some edge to it,—else it is none.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 53

The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 53

Do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 53-54

Virtues are, in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. … Men do what is called a good action ... much as they would pay a fine. ... Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. ... Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself, and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of lower strain, so it be genuine and equal than that it be glittering and unsteady.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 54

I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. ... Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 54-55

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 55

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,—under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 55

If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 55-56

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 57

Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—' Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 58-59

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 59

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties ore lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 59-60

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 61

That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 62-63

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ' I think,' ' I am,' but quotes some saint or sage.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 67

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better onesEmerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 67

Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 71

Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say, —' Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 71-72

Truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 74

The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classification is idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 78-79

The reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 85

Men … measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 86

“Spiritual Laws”

The thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.Emerson, “Spiritual Laws,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 145

That statement only is fit to be made public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity.Emerson, “Spiritual Laws,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 145

They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.Emerson, “Spiritual Laws,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 146

“Friendship”

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 192

The sweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell.Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 192-193

All the speed in that contest [for friendship] depends on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles.Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 193

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank; that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 193-194

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 194

We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting—as indeed he could not help doing—for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him.Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 194-195

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 196

“Circles”

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.Emerson, “Circles,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 295

Essays, Second Series (1844)Complete Works (1883), Volume 3http://books.google.com/books?id=92U4AAAAYAAJ

“The Poet”

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual.Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 9

The poet … stands among partial men for the complete man.Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 11

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 11

All men live by truth and stand in need of expression. … In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 11

The great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature.Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 11

The poet is the Namer or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 26

“Experience”

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. ... Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 63

A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 82

The world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 85

I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 85

... paltry empiricismEmerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 85

Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation?Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to record it.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

The men ask, 'What's the news?' as if the old were so bad. Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

How many individuals can we count in society? how many actions? how many opinions? So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. Many eager persons successively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves ridiculous. They acquire democratic manners, they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse, I observe that in the history of mankind there is never a solitary example of success, — taking their own tests of success. I say this polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, Why not realize your world?Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life. We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but, in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Of what use is genius if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life?Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

The physicians say they are not materialists; but they are:— Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

The definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious. We house with the insane, and must humor them; then conversation dies out. Once I took such delight in Montaigne that I thought I should not need any other book; before that, in Shakspeare; then in Plutarch; then in Plotinus; at one time in Bacon; afterwards in Goethe; even in Bettine; but now I turn the pages of either of them languidly, whilst I still cherish their genius. So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

Divinity is behind our failures and follies also. The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense.Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)

“Nominalist and Realist”

Money, which represents the prose of life.Emerson, “Nominalist and Realist”, Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 221

Representative Men (1850)Complete Works (1883), Volume 4http://books.google.com/books?id=ZyIRAAAAYAAJ

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1. Uses of Great Men

The search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men (1892), p. 6

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men (1892), p. 8

It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 8-9

2. Plato, or the Philosopher

When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. Be it so. Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.Emerson, “Plato, or the Philosopher,” Representative Men (1892), p. 44

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. ... They lived in their writings, and so their house and street life was trivial and commonplace.Emerson, 2, “Plato, or the Philosopher,” Representative Men (1892), p. 45

4. Montaigne, or the Skeptic

The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars.Emerson, 4, “Montaigne, or the Skeptic,” Representative Men (1892)

7. Goethe; or, the Writer

His [the writer’s] failures are the preparation of his victories. A new thought, or a crisis of passion, apprises “him that all that he has yet learned and written is exoteric, —is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact. What then ? Does he throw away the pen? No; he begins again to describe in the new light which has shined on him.Emerson, 7, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 267-268

There is a certain heat in the breast, which attends the perception of a primary truth, which is the shining of the spiritual sun down into the shaft of the mine.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 269

Every thought which dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergence announces its own rank.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 269

Society has, at all times, the same want, namely, of one sane man with adequate powers of expression to hold up each object of monomania, in its right relations. The ambitious and mercenary bring their last new mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, Texas, railroad, Romanism, mesmerism, or California; and, by detaching the object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare; and a multitude go mad about it, and they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crotchet.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 269-270

There is a certain ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, unless the scholar heed it. In this country, the emphasis of conversation, and of public opinion, commends the practical man. … It is believed, the ordering a cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna; or, the running up and down to procure a company of subscribers to set a-going five or ten thousand spindles; or, the negotiations of a caucus, and the practising on the prejudices and facility of country-people, to secure their votes in November,—is practical and commendable.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer” Representative Men (1892), pp. 270-271

Act, if you like,—but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form, and lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer” Representative Men (1892), p. 271

In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 271-272

The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 272

How can he [today’s writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 274

Amid littleness and detail, he detected the Genius of life, the old cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us, and showed that the dulness and prose we ascribe to the age was only another of his masks: “His very flight is presence in disguise”that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue dress, … and this by tracing the pedigree of every usage and practice, every institution, utensil, and means, home to its origin in the structure of man.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 278-279

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end?Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 286

Talent alone can not make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise; holding things because they are things. If he can not rightly express himself to-day, the same things subsist, and will open themselves to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind,—the burden of truth to be declared,—more or less understood; and it constitutes his business and calling in the world, to see those facts through, and to make them known. What signifies that he trips and stammers; that his voice is harsh or hissing; that his method or his tropes are inadequate? That message will find method and imagery, articulation and melody. Though he were dumb, it would speak. If not,—if there be no such God's word in the man,—what care we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant he is? It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, whether there be a man behind it, or no. In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some moneyed corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But, through every clause and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes of the most determined of men: his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 286-287

He has no aims less large than the conquest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be his portion: a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed; of a stoical self-command and self denial, and having one test for all men,—What can you teach me? All possessions are valued by him for that only; rank, privileges, health, time, being itself.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 289-290

An intellectual man can see himself as a third person; therefore his faults and delusions interest him equally with his successes. Though he wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to know the history and destiny of man; whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him are only interested in a low success.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 291

Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and country, when original talent was oppressed under the load of books and mechanical auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of claims, taught men how to dispose of this mountainous miscellany, and make it subservient. I join Napoleon with him, as being both representatives of the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions,—two stern realists, who, with their scholars, have severally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 294-295

It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity. Man is the most composite of all creatures.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 295

Goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence of all times; that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 295-296

We too must write bibles.Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 296

The Conduct of Life (1860)Complete Works (1883), Volume 6http://books.google.com/books?id=4PM_AAAAYAAJ

Money often costs too much.Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 3, “Wealth,” p. 107

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 4, “Culture,” p. 145

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 6, “Worship,” p. 214

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.Emerson The Conduct of Life, Chapter 7, “Considerations by the Way,” Complete Works (1883), vol. 6, p. 237

Society and Solitude (1870)Complete Works (1883), Volume 7http://books.google.com/books?id=KUstAAAAYAAJ

There are metals, like potassium and sodium, which, to be kept pure, must be kept under naphtha. Such are the talents determined on some specialty, which a culminating civilization fosters in the heart of great cities and in royal chambers. Nature protects her own work. To the culture of the world an Archimedes, a Newton is indispensable; so she guards them by a certain aridity. If these had been good fellows, fond of dancing, port, and clubs, we should have had no “Theory of the Sphere” and no “Principia.” They had that necessity of isolation which genius feels. Each must stand on his glass tripod if he would keep his electricity.Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 12

Such is the tragic necessity which strict science finds underneath our domestic and neighborly life, irresistibly driving each adult soul as with whips into the desert, and making our warm covenants sentimental and momentary. We must infer that the ends of thought were peremptory, if they were to be secured at such ruinous cost. They are deeper than can be told, and belong to the immensities and eternities. They reach down to that depth where society itself originates and disappears ; where the question is, Which is first, man or men ? where the individual is lost in his source.Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 15

A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 16

'T is not new facts that avail, but the heat to dissolve everybody's facts.Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 17

In society, high advantages are set down to the individual as disqualifications. Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 18

We sink as easily as we rise, through sympathy. So many men whom I know are degraded by their sympathies; their native aims being high enough, but their relation all too tender to the gross people about them. Men cannot afford to live together on their merits, and they adjust themselves by their demerits,—by their love of gossip, or by sheer tolerance and animal good-nature. They untune and dissipate the brave aspirant.Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 18

That work is ever the more pleasant to the imagination which is not now required.Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 7, “Works and Days,” Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 169

Letters and Social AimsComplete Works (1883), Volume 8http://books.google.com/books?id=rgoRAAAAYAAJ

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.Emerson, Letters and Social Aims, Complete Works (1883), Volume 8, p. 163

PoemsComplete Works (1883), Volume 9http://books.google.com/books?id=OCo4AAAAYAAJ

The horseman serves the horse,The neatherd serves the neat,The merchant serves the purse,The eater serves his meat;'T is the day of the chattel,Web to weave, and corn to grind;Things are in the saddle,And ride mankind.Emerson, “Ode,” Complete Works (1883), vol. 9, p. 73

Lectures and Biographical SketchesComplete Works (1883), Volume 10http://books.google.com/books?id=W406AAAAMAAJ

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art. Emerson, “The Scholar,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches, Complete Works (1883), vol. 10, p. 279

Natural History of IntellectComplete Works (1883), Volume 12

http://books.google.com/books?id=Djs6AAAAMAAJ

When I look at the tree or the river and have not yet definitely made out what they would say to me, they are by no means unimpressive. I wait for them, I enjoy them before they yet speak. I feel as if I stood by an ambassador charged with the message of his king, which he does not deliver because the hour when he should say it is not yet arrived.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 6-7

My belief in the use of a course on philosophy is that the student shall learn to appreciate the miracle of the mind; shall learn its subtle but immense power, or shall begin to learn it; shall come to know that in seeing and in no tradition he must find what truth is; that he shall see in it the source of all traditions, and shall see each one of them as better or worse statement of its revelations; shall come to trust it entirely, as the only true; to cleave to God against the name of God.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 7

'T is a great vice in all countries, the sacrifice of scholars to be courtiers and diners-out, to talk for the amusement of those who wish to be amused, though the stars of heaven must be plucked down and packed into rockets to this end.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 9

What we really want is not a haste to act, but a certain piety toward the source of action and knowledge. In fact we have to say that there is a certain beatitude, — I can call it nothing less, — to which all men are entitled, tasted by them in different degrees, which is a perfection of their nature, and to which their entrance must be in every way forwarded. Practical men, though they could lift the globe, cannot arrive at this. Something very different has to be done, — the availing ourselves of every impulse of genius, an emanation of the heaven it tells of, and the resisting this conspiracy of men and material things against the sanitary and legitimate inspirations of the intellectual nature.1 What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 9-10

My contribution will be simply historical. I write anecdotes of the intellect; a sort of Farmer's Almanac of mental moods. I confine my ambition to true reporting of its play in natural action.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 11

I confess to a little distrust of that completeness of system which metaphysicians are apt to affect. 'T is the gnat grasping the world. All these exhaustive theories appear indeed a false and vain attempt to introvert and analyze the Primal Thought. That is upstream, and what a stream! Can you swim up Niagara Falls?Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 12

Metaphysics is dangerous as a single pursuit. We should feel more confidence in the same results from the mouth of a man of the world.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 13

I want not the logic, but the power, if any, which it brings into science and literature; the man who can humanize this logic, these syllogisms, and give me the results. The adepts value only the pure geometry, the aerial bridge ascending from earth to heaven with arches and abutments of pure reason. I am fully contented if you tell me where are the two termini.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 13

But this watching of the mind, in season and out of season, to see the mechanics of the thing, is a little of the detective. The analytic process is cold and bereaving and, shall I say it? somewhat mean, as spying. There is something surgical in metaphysics as we treat it. Were not an ode a better form? The poet sees wholes and avoids analysis; the metaphysician, dealing as it were with the mathematics of the mind, puts himself out of the way of the inspiration; loses that which is the miracle and creates the worship.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p.

Philosophy is still rude and elementary. It will one day be taught by poets. The poet is in the natural attitude; he is believing; the philosopher, after some struggle, having only reasons for believing.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 14

To Be is the unsolved, unsolvable wonder. To Be, in its two connections of inward and outward, the mind and Nature. The wonder subsists, and age, though of eternity, could not approach a solution. But the suggestion is always returning, that hidden source publishing at once our being and that it is the source of outward Nature. Who are we, and what is Nature, have one answer in the life that rushes into us.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 14

In my thought I seem to stand on the bank of a river and watch the endless flow of the stream, floating objects of all shapes, colors and natures; nor can I much detain them as they pass, except by running beside them a little way along the bank. But whence they come or whither they go is not told me. ... Who has found the boundaries of human intelligence? Who has made a chart of its channel, or approached the fountain of this wonderful Nile?Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 16

Life is incessant parturition. There are viviparous and oviparous minds; minds that produce their thoughts complete men, like armed soldiers, ready and swift to go out to resist and conquer all the armies of error, and others that deposit their dangerous unripe thoughts here and there to lie still for a time and be brooded in other minds, and the shell not be broken until the next age, for them to begin, as new individuals, their career.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 18

Our eating, trading, marrying, and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities, whilst they are properly symbols only; when we have come, by a divine leading, into the inner firmament, we are apprised of the unreality or representative character of what we esteemed final.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 19

There is no solitary flower and no solitary thought. It comes single like a foreign traveller,— but find out its name, and it is related to a powerful and numerous family.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 21

The mind is first only receptive. Surcharge it with thoughts in which it delights and it becomes active. The moment a man begins not to be convinced, that moment he begins to convince.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 25

I never hear a good speech at caucus or at cattle-show but it helps me, not so much by adding to my knowledge as by apprising me of admirable uses to which what I know can be turned. The commonest remark, if the man could only extend it a little, would make him a genius; but the thought is prematurely checked, and grows no more. All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enchance immensely the value of your first.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 25

In unfit company the finest powers are paralyzed. No ambition, no opposition, no friendly attention and fostering kindness, no wine, music or exhilarating aids, neither warm fireside nor fresh air, walking or riding, avail at all to resist the palsy of mis-association. Genius is mute, is dull; there is no genius. Ask of your flowers to open when you have let in on them a freezing wind.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 26

There is no permanent wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company or other favorable conditions, become wise.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 27

Each man is a new power in Nature. He holds the keys of the world in his hands. No quality in Nature's vast magazines he cannot touch, no truth he cannot see. Silent, passive, even sulkily, Nature offers every morning her wealth to man. She is immensely rich; he is welcome to her entire goods, but she speaks no word, will not so much as beckon or cough; only this, she is careful to leave all her doors ajar, — towers, hall, storeroom and cellar. If he takes her hint and uses her goods she speaks no word; if he blunders and starves she says nothing. To the idle blockhead Nature is poor, sterile, inhospitable. To the gardener her loam is all strawberries, pears, pineapples. To the miller her rivers whirl the wheel and weave carpets and broadcloth. To the sculptor her stone is soft; to the painter her plumbago and marl are pencils and chromes. To the poet all sounds and words are melodies and rhythms.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 28-29

Every man is a new method.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 29

Every man is a new method and distributes things anew. If he could attain full size he would take up, first or last, atom by atom, all the world into a new form.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 29-30

Echo the leaders and they will fast enough see that you have nothing for them. They came to you for something they had not.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 30

The one thing not to be forgiven to intellectual persons is that they believe in the ideas of others. From this deference comes the imbecility and fatigue of their society, for of course they cannot affirm these from the deep life; they say what they would have you believe, but what they do not quite know. Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of character. The temptation is to patronize Providence, to fall into the accepted ways of talking and acting of the good sort of people.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 31

There is no property or relation in that immense arsenal of forces which the earth is, but some man is at last found who affects this, delights to unfold and work it, as if he were the born publisher and demonstrator of it.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 31

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 32-33

Newton did not exercise more ingenuity but less than another to see the world.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 33

Pan ... could intoxicate by the strain of his shepherd's pipe,— silent yet to most, for his pipes make the music of the spheres, which, because it sounds eternally, is not heard at all by the dull, but only by the mind.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 36

A man is intellectual in proportion as he can make an object of every sensation, perception and intuition; so long as he has no engagement in any thought or feeling which can hinder him from looking at it as somewhat foreign. A man of talent has only to name any form or fact with which we are most familiar, and the strong light which he throws on it enhances it to all eyes. People wonder they never saw it before. The detachment consists in seeing it under a new order, not under a personal but under a universal light. To us it had economic, but to the universe it has poetic relations, and it is as good as sun and star now. Indeed, this is the measure of all intellectual power among men, the power to complete this detachment, the power of genius to hurl a new individual into the world. An intellectual man has the power to go out of himself and see himself as an object; therefore his defects and delusions interest him as much as his successes. He not only wishes to succeed in life, but he wishes in thought to know the history and destiny of a man; whilst the cloud of egotists drifting about are only interested in a success to their egotism.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 38-39

A perception is always a generalization. It lifts the object, whether in material or moral nature, into a type. The animal, the low degrees of intellect, know only individuals. The philosopher knows only laws. That is, he considers a purely mental fact, part of the soul itself. We say with Kenelm Digby, "All things that she knoweth are herself, and she is all that she knoweth." Insight assimilates the thing seen. Is it only another way of affirming and illustrating this to say that it sees nothing alone, but sees each particular object in just connections, — sees all in God? In all healthy souls is an inborn necessity of presupposing for each particular fact a prior Being which compels it to a harmony with all other natures. The game of Intellect is the perception that whatever befalls or can be stated is a universal proposition; and contrariwise, that every general statement is poetical again by being particularized or impersonated.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 40

A single thought has no limit to its value; a thought, properly speaking, — that is a truth held not from any man's saying so, or any accidental benefit or recommendation it has in our trade or circumstance, but because we have perceived it is a fact in the nature of things.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 40-41

Every new impression on the mind is not to be derided, but is to be accounted for, and, until accounted for, registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 41

My seeing this or that, and that I see it so or so, is as much a fact in the natural history of the world as is the freezing of water at thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 41

My percipiency affirms the presence and perfection of law, as much as all the martyrs. A perception, it is of a necessity older than the sun and moon, and the Father of the Gods.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 41

Do not trifle with your perceptions, or hold them cheap. ... Say, what impresses me ought to impress me. I am bewildered by the immense variety of attractions and cannot take a step; but this one thread, fine as gossamer, is yet real; and I hear a whisper, which I dare trust, that it is the thread on which the earth and the heaven of heavens are strung.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 41-42

Genius is a delicate sensibility to the laws of the world, adding the power to express them again in some new form.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 42

The highest measure of poetic power is such insight and faculty to fuse the circumstances of to-day as shall make transparent the whole web of circumstance and opinion in which the man finds himself, so that he releases himself from the traditions in which he grew,—no longer looks back to Hebrew or Greek or English use or tradition in religion, laws or life, but sees so truly the omnipresence of eternal cause that he can convert the daily and hourly event of New York, of Boston, into universal symbols. I owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common and showing me that gods are sitting disguised in every company.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 42-43

Genius is not a lazy angel contemplating itself and things. It is insatiable for expression.Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 43

Other Unpublished Papers

The whole audience were known to him and were drawn together by the expectation of witnessing his powers. Mr. E [i.e. Charles] was fully aware of all this, and aware that whatever he said would be eagerly and favorably listened to. Instead, therefore, of feeling that the audience was an object of attention from him, he felt that he was an object of attention to the audience. This of course is the reverse of what it should be. Instead of finding his audience—like other orators—an angry master who is to be pacified, or a sturdy master who is to be cajoled,—and in any case, one whose difficult regard is to be won,—he takes it for granted that he has the command. He makes a King’s Speech; condescendingly drops very fine things, which, if you listen with all your might, will pay you. … Let him remember that the true orator must not wrap himself in himself, but must wholly abandon himself to the sentiment he utters and to the multitude he addresses;—must become their property, to the end that they may become his.Emerson, An unsent letter to his brother Charles, dated July 15, 1828, cited in First We Read, Then We Write (2009), p. 67