Essays — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays

Ralph Waldo Emerson · License: Public domain · Source

• "What may this mean,[625] That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?" ¶372
• Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It is content to seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect. ¶390
• This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department. ¶413
• Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass[698] and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much. ¶419
• There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices. ¶435
• Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too, Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.[712] ¶436
• And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine pyrrhonism,[713] at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that _if we are true_, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God. ¶438
• Some of the Provencal poetry is of the highest artistic significance, though the mass of it is worthless high-flown trash.] ¶449
• "Striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form." ] ¶453
• "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man." ¶463
• "Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled." ¶484

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