Violets and grass preach it; rain and snow, wind and tides, every change, every cause in Nature, is nothing but a disguised missionary. With his keen spiritual vision he beheld that even in the mud and scum of things, There alway, alway, something sings.' Emerson was intensely American, although it was the America of the future which he admired. He prophesied a new religion and a new type of man that should be born in America. As a result of his stirring moral appeal during the Civil War, it was said of him, "He sent ten thousand sons to the War." Emerson had no literary ambitions, yet his form of expression is so perfect that his prose has the quality of poetry, and curiously enough, much of his poetry has a decided prose quality. He had an immortal thirst for Truth, and said, "God gives every mind its choice between Truth and Repose. Take which you please; you can never have both." No one can read Emerson with his denunciation of moral cowardice, his appeal for personal independence, his call to a life of intelligence, without having his mind opened, and his spirit stirred until he finds himself again master in his own house. His sayings are fragments of life, and it was his ability to see life whole and to express the universal thoughts of man that marked him as seer and prophet. RINGS and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, corals and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of his merit. -GIFTS 4 MY LITTLE BOOK OF EMERSON O friend never strike sail to a Fear. Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and refined by the Every man alone is sincere. -HEROISM At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellowman by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. + -FRIENDSHIP Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us, or we find it not. -ART Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum, and here they will break out into their native music and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs. -HISTORY The only way to have a friend, is to be one. Vain to hope to come nearer a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his Soul only flees the faster from you, and you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. FRIENDSHIP Nor is it to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. -MANNERS Shakespeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise; the others, conceivably. A good reader can, in a sort, nestle into Plato's brain, and think from thence; but not into Shakespeare's. We are still out of doors. -SHAKESPEARE Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful. It is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." I -CIRCLES now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are. -ART The poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common-wealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the Soul as he also receives, but they more. THE POET Fa ate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for Causes which are unpenetrated. -CONDUCT OF LIFE In the sublimest flights of the Soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. -ADDRESS TO CLASS IN DIVINITY COLLEGE Life is too short to waste + In critic peep or cynic bark, Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and -NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS + Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true. And the unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. -ADDRESS TO CLASS IN DIVINITY COLLEGE Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. + -COMPENSATION Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may I can accept nothing. -ADDRESS TO CLASS IN DIVINITY COLLEGE |