Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1803-1882.
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
Each and All.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
Each and All.
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.
The Problem.
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
The Problem.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew:
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
The Problem.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.
The Problem.
Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
Hamatreya.
Good bye, proud world! I 'm going home;
Thou art not my friend, and I 'm not thine.[598:1]
Good Bye.
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
Good Bye.
[599]
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
The Rhodora.
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.[599:1]
Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
Ode to Beauty.
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
Give all to Love.
Love not the flower they pluck and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
Blight.
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.
Dirge.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattl'd farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.[599:2]
Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument.
What potent blood hath modest May!
May-Day.
And striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
May-Day.
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is never wide.
Nemesis.
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
Boston Hymn. 1863.
[600]
Oh, tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire.
Ode, Concord, July 4, 1857.
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
Ode, Concord, July 4, 1857.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!
Voluntaries.
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore.
Voluntaries.
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
Solution.
Born for success he seemed,
With grace to win, with heart to hold,
With shining gifts that took all eyes.
In Memoriam.
Nor mourn the unalterable Days
That Genius goes and Folly stays.
In Memoriam.
Fear not, then, thou child infirm;
There 's no god dare wrong a worm.
Compensation.
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
Beauty.
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill?
Suum Cuique.
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
Quatrains. Nature.
Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,—
"'T is man's perdition to be safe
When for the truth he ought to die."
Sacrifice.
[601]
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
Boston.
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.[601:1]
Nature. Addresses and Lectures. The American Scholar.
There is no great and no small[601:2]
To the Soul that maketh all;
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.
Essays. First Series. Epigraph to History.
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
Essays. First Series. History.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Essays. First Series. History.
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.
Essays. First Series. History.
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance.
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.
Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance.
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
Essays. First Series. Compensation.
It is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
Essays. First Series. Compensation.
[602]
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
Essays. First Series. Compensation.
Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds.
Essays. First Series. Spiritual Laws.
All mankind love a lover.
Essays. First Series. Love.
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
Essays. First Series. Epigraph to Friendship.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.
Essays. First Series. Friendship.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Essays. First Series. Circles.
There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behaviour yield to the energy of the individual.
Essays. Second Series. Manners.
And with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish if you will show me the fountain of the Nile."
New England Reformers.
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Representative Men. Uses of Great Men.
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?[602:1]
Representative Men. Montaigne.
Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.
Representative Men. Shakespeare.
[603]
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
English Traits. Race.
I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes.
English Traits. Manners.
A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.
English Traits. Aristocracy.
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do.
The Conduct of Life. Wealth.
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
The Conduct of Life. Behaviour.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
The Conduct of Life. Behaviour.
Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.
The Conduct of Life. Considerations by the Way.
God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
The Conduct of Life. Society and Solitude.
Hitch your wagon to a star.
The Conduct of Life. Civilization.
I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
The Conduct of Life. Books.
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
The Conduct of Life. Old Age.
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
Letters and Social Aims. Social Aims.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
[604]
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.[604:1]
Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century.
Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world.
Progress of Culture. Phi Beta Kappa Address, July 18, 1867.
I do not find that the age or country makes the least difference; no, nor the language the actors spoke, nor the religion which they professed, whether Arab in the desert or Frenchman in the Academy. I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.[604:2]
Lectures and Biographical Sketches. The Preacher.
Footnotes
[598:1] See Byron, page 544.
[599:1] I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.—Rumbold (when on the scaffold).
[599:2]
No war or battle sound
Was heard the world around.
Milton: Hymn of Christ's Nativity, line 31.
[601:1] Everything comes if a man will only wait.—Disraeli: Tancred, book iv. chap. viii.
[601:2] See Pope, page 316.
[602:1] See Davies, page 176.
[604:1] There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent.—Bayle: vol. ii. p. 779.
Though old the thought and oft exprest,
'T is his at last who says it best.
Lowell: For an Autograph.
[604:2] See Johnson, page 370.