Through the year with Emerson; / Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882

\ 



THROUGH THE YEAR 
WITH EMERSON 



SELECTED AND 
ARRANGED BY 
EDITH E. WOOD 




DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
40 EAST 19TH STREET, NEW YORK 



Copyright, i 9 5 , by 
Dodge Publishing Company. 



THROUGH THE YEAR 
WITH EMERSON 



(3) 



FRIENDSHIP 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "FRIENDSHIP" 



FRIENDSHIP. 




January First. 

E have a great deal more kind 
ness than is ever spoken. 
* * * the whole human 
family is bathed with an ele 
ment of love like a fine ether. 

January Second. 

The effect of the indulgence of this human affec 
tion is a certain cordial exhilaration. 

January Third. 

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too 
good to be believed. 

January Fourth. 

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot 
take part in a conversation of the most sincere and 
searching sort. 

January Fifth. 

Almost every man we meet requires some civility, 
requires to be humored; * * * but a friend is a 
sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. 

(7) 



FRIENDSHIP. 




January Sixth. 

ET the soul be assured that 
somewhere in the universe it 
should rejoin its friend, and it 
would be content and cheerful 
alone for a thousand years. 

January Seventh. 

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for 
my friends, the old and the new. 

January Eighth. 

Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust 
in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to 
be overturned, of his foundations. 

January Ninth. 

My friends have come to me unsought. The great 
God gave them to me. 

January Tenth. 

When friendships are real, they are not glass 
threads of frost-work, but the solidest thing we 
know. 

(8) 




FRIENDSHIP. 
January Eleventh. 

UR friendships hurry to short 
and poor conclusions, because 
we have made them a texture 
of wine and dreams instead of 
the tough fiber of the human 
heart. 

January Twelfth. 

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. 
Before him I may think aloud. 

January Thirteenth. 

Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, 
but for the total worth of man. 

January Fourteenth. 

For perfect friendship may be said to require na 
tures so rare and costly, so well tempered each, and so 
happily adapted * * * that very seldom can its 
satisfaction be realized. 

January Fifteenth. 

There are two elements that go to the composition 
of friendship : one is Truth, the other is Tenderness. 

(9) 



FRIENDSHIP. 




January Sixteenth. 

RIENDSHIP that select and 
sacred relation which is a kind 
of absolute, and which even 
leaves the language of love 
suspicious and common, so 
much is this purer, and noth 
ing is so much divine. 

January Seventeenth. 

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as 
not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience 
for its opening. We must be our own before we can 
be another's. 

January Eighteenth. 

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a 
second person, hypocrisy begins. 

January Nineteenth. 

Our intellectual and active powers increase with 
our affection. 

January Twentieth. 

A friend may well be reckoned the master-piece of 
nature. 




FRIENDSHIP. 
January Twenty-first. 

APPY is the house that shelters 

a friend! It might well be 
built, like a festal bower or 
arch, to entertain him a single 
day. Happier, if he know the 

solemnity of that relation and 
honor its law! 

January Twenty-second. 

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to 
signify modish and worldly alliances. 

January Twenty-third. 

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his 
echo. 

January Twenty-fourth. 

The only money of God is God. He pays never 
with anything less, or anything else. The only re 
ward of virtue is virtue : the only way to have a friend 
Is to be one. 

January Twenty-fifth. 

When a man becomes dear to me I have touched 
the goal of fortune. 

(ii) 



FRIENDSHIP. 




January Twenty-sixth. 

O two men but being left alone 
with each other enter into sim 
pler relations. Yet it is affin 
ity that determines which 
two shall converse. 

January Twenty-seventh. 

Let me alone to the end of the world, rather than 
that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, 
his real sympathy. 

January Twenty-eighth. 

Pleasant are these jets of affection which make a 
young world for me again. 

January Twenty-ninth. 

Almost all people descend to meet. All association 
must be a compromise. 

January Thirtieth. 

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I 
would have them where I can find them, but I seldom 
use them. 

(12) 




FRIENDSHIP. 
January Thirty-first. 

HE essence of friendship is en- 
tireness, a total magnanimity 
and trust. It must not sur 
mise or provide for infirmity. 
It treats its object as a god, 
that it may deify both. 



(13) 



COM PENSATION 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "COMPENSATION" 



ds) 




COMPENSATION. 
February First. 

HERE is always some leveling 
circumstance that puts down 
the overbearing, the strong, 
the rich, the fortunate sub 
stantially on the same ground 
with all others. 

February Second. 

The voice of the Almighty saith, "Up and onward 
f orevermore !" We cannot stay amid the ruins. 

February Third. 

For everything you have missed, you have gained, 
something else; and for everything you gain you lose 
something. 

February Fourth. 

Every excess causes a defect; every defect an ex 
cess. Every sw.e*"& bath its sour, every evil its good. 

February Fifth. 

Treat men as pawns and nine-pins and you shall 
suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart 
you shall lose your own. 

d7) 



COMPENSATION. 




February Sixth. 



LEARN the wisdom of St. 
Bernard, "Nothing can work 
me damage except myself; the 
harm that I sustain I carry 
about with me, and never am 
a real sufferer but by my own 
fault." 



February Seventh. 

The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God re 
appears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. 

February Eighth. 

He who by force of will or of thought is great and 
overlooks thousands, has the responsibility of over 
looking. 

February Ninth. 

The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
things. But the President has paid dear for his White 
House. 

February Tenth. 

Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within 
the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. 

(18) 




COMPENSATION. 
February Eleventh. 

VERY opinion reacts on him 
who utters it. It is a thread 
ball thrown at a mark, but the 
other end remains in the 
thrower's bag. 

February Twelfth. 

As the royal armies sent against Napoleon * * * 
from enemies became friends, so do disasters of all 
kinds * * * prove benefactors. 

February Thirteenth. 

No man thoroughly understands a truth until first 
he has contended against it. 

February Fourteenth. 

In general, every evil to which we do not succumb 
is a benefactor * * * we gain the strength of the 
temptation we resist. 

February Fifteenth. 

Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks 
exist, and will appear. 

(19) 




COMPENSATION. 

February Sixteenth. 

VERY faculty which is a re 
ceiver of pleasure has an equal 
penalty put on its abuse. It 
is to answer for its moderation 
with its life. 

February Seventeenth. 

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, 
cannot be severed ; for the effect already blooms in the 
cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the 
seed. 

February Eighteenth. 

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. 
February Nineteenth. 

Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit 
which you receive, a tax is levied. 

February Twentieth. 

Always pay; for first or last you must pay your en 
tire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time 
between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. 

(20) 




COMPENSATION. 
February Twenty-first. 



HILST I stand in simple rela 
tions to my fellow-man I have 
no displeasure in meeting 
him. * * * But as soon 
as there is any departure from 
simplicity * * * there is 
hate in him and fear in me. 



February Twenty-second. 

The wise man always throws himself on the side of 
his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs 
to find his weak point. 

February Twenty-third. 

As no man had ever a point of pride that was not 
injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was 
not somewhere made useful to him. 

February Twenty-fourth. 

Beware of too much good staying in your own 
hands. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it 
away quickly in some sort. 

February Twenty-fifth. 
A man cannot speak but he judges himself. 

(21) 



COMPENSATION. 

February Twenty-sixth. 




UR strength grows out of our 
weakness. Not until we are 
pricked and stung and sorely 
shot at, awakens the indigna 
tion which arms itself with 
secret forces. 



February Twenty-seventh. 

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. 
There is no such thing as concealment. 

February Twenty-eighth. 

If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of 
the man what she puts into his chest; swells the es 
tate, but kills the owner. 

February Twenty-ninth. 

All the good of nature is the soul's, and may be 
had if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is by labor 
which the heart and the head allow. 



(22) 



SELF-RELIANCE 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "SELF-RELIANCE" 



(23) 



SELF-RELIANCE. 




March First. 

HERE is a time in every man's 
education when he arrives at 
the conviction that * * * no 
kernel of nourishing corn can 
come to him but through his 
toil bestowed on that plot of 
ground which is given to him 
to till. 



March Second. 

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. 

March Third. 

When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as 
sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of 
the corn. 

March Fourth. 

Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. 
March Fifth. 

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart 
into his work and done his best ; but what he has said 
or done otherwise shall give him no peace. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 




March Sixth. 

LSE, if you would be a man, 
speak what you think to-day 
in words as hard as cannon 
balls, and to-morrow speak 
what to-morrow thinks * * * 
though it contradicts every 
thing you said to-day. 

March Seventh. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what 
the people think. 

March Eighth. 

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron 
string. 

March Ninth. 

He who would gather immortal palms must not be 
hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore 
if it be goodness. 

March Tenth. 

Fear never but you shall be consistent in what 
ever variety of actions, so that they be each honest 
and natural in their hour. 

(26) 




SELF-RELIANCE. 
March Eleventh. 

N every work of genius we 
recognize our own rejected 
thoughts; they come back to 
us with a certain alienated 
majesty. 

March Twelfth. 



Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn ap 
pearances and you always may. 

March Thirteenth. 

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
under his feet. 

March Fourteenth. 

In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast 
chained the wheels of Chance, and shall always drag 
her after thee. 

March Fifteenth. 

It is only as a man puts off from himself all external 
support and stands alone that I see him to be strong 
and to prevail. 

(27) 




SELF-RELIANCE. 

March Sixteenth. 

RAYER that craves a particular 
commodity anything less 
than all good, is vicious. 

March Seventeenth. 

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self- 
helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. 

March Eighteenth. 

If we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at 
last. 

March Nineteenth. 

All persons have their moments of reason, when 
they look out into the region of absolute truth. 

March Twentieth. 

If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the 
happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve 
that you should. I must be myself. 

(28) 




SELF-RELIANCE. 
March Twenty-first. 

HERE is a great responsible 
Thinker and Actor moving 
wherever moves a man; that 
a true man belongs to no other 
time or place, but is the center 
of things. 

March Twenty-second. 
Life only avails, not the having lived. 

March Twenty-third. 
Insist on yourself; never imitate. 

March Twenty-fourth. 

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from 
the highest point of view. 

March Twenty-fifth. 
If we live truly, we shall see truly. 
March Twenty-sixth. 

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Noth 
ing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 

(29) 



SELF-RELIANCE. 

March Twenty-seventh. 




RAVELING is a fool's paradise. 



* * * 



my giant goes with 



me wherever I go. 



March Twenty-eighth. 
To be great is to be misunderstood. 
March Twenty-ninth. 

Discontent is the want of self-reliance ; it is infirmity 
of will. 

March Thirtieth. 

We pass for what we are. 
Character teaches above our wills. 

March Thirty-first. 

As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not 
beg. He will then see prayer in all action. 



(307 



EXPERIENCE 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "EXPERIENCE" 



(3D 



EXPERIENCE. 




April First. 

O much of our time is prepara 
tion, so much is routine, and 
so much retrospect, that the 
pith of each man's genius con 
tracts itself to a very few 
hours. 

April Second. 



Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, 
as we pass through them, they prove to be many col 
ored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and 
each shows only what lies in its focus. 

April Third. 

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to 
skate well on them. 

April Fourth. 

If we will take the good we find, asking no ques 
tions, we shall have heaping measures. 

April Fifth. 

To fill the hour, that is happiness; to fill the hour 
and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. 

(33) 



EXPERIENCE. 




April Sixth. 

O not craze yourself with think 
ing, but go about your business 
anywhere. Life is not intel 
lectual or critical, but sturdy. 
Its chief good is for well 
mixed people, who can enjoy 
what they find without ques 
tion. 



April Seventh. 

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. 
It depends upon the mood of the man, whether he 
shall see the sunset or the fine poem. 

April Eighth. 

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. 

April Ninth. 

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. 
The years teach much which the days never know. 

April Tenth. 

Every man is an impossibility until he is born; 
everything impossible, until we see a success. 

(34) 




EXPERIENCE. 
April Eleventh. 

LL good conversation, manners, 
and action, come from a spon 
taneity which forgets usages, 
and makes the moment great. 
Nature hates calculators; her 
methods are saltatory and im 
pulsive. 

April Twelfth. 

Since our office is with moments let us husband 
them. Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to 
me as five minutes in the next millennium. 

April Thirteenth. 

We thrive by casualties. Our chief experiences 
have been casual. 

April Fourteenth. 

We believe in ourselves, as we do not believe in 
others. We permit all things to ourselves, and that 
which we call sin in others, is experiment for us. 

April Fifteenth. 

There never was a right endeavor, but it succeeded. 
Patience and patience, we shall win at the last. 

(35) 



EXPERIENCE. 




April Sixteenth. 

LL writings come by the grace 
of God, and all doing and hav 
ing. * * * I can see noth 
ing at last, in success or fail 
ure, than more or less of vital 
force supplied from the Eter 
nal. 



April Seventeenth. 

A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no 
luster as you turn it in your hand, until you come to 
a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful 
colors. 

April Eighteenth. 

Every man thinks a latitude safe for himself, which 
is no wise to be indulged to another. 

April Nineteenth. 

The great and crescive self, rooted in absolute-na 
ture, supplants all relative existence, and ruins the 
kingdom of mortal friendship and love. 

April Twentieth. 

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor 
doubled. Any invasion of its unity would be chaos. 

(36) 



EXPERIENCE. 




April Twenty-first. 



HE most attractive class of peo 
ple are those who are powerful 
obliquely, and not by the direct 
stroke: men of genius but not 

yet accredited: one gets the 
cheer of their light, without 
paying too great a tax. 



April Twenty-second. 

Men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands 
are too soft and tremulous for successful labor. It is 
a tempest of fancies, and the only ballast I know, is 
a respect to the present hour. 

April Twenty-third. 

A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must 
walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of 
wisdom is made a fool. 

April Twenty-fourth. 

In popular experience everything good is on the 
highway. * * * to say nothing of nature's pic 
tures in every street, of sunsets and sunrises every 
day, and the sculpture of the human body never ab 
sent. 



(37) 



'EXPERIENCE. 




April Twenty-fifth. 

AM grown by sympathy a little 
eager and sentimental, but 
leave me alone and I should 
relish every hour and what it 
brought me. * * * I am 
thankful for small mercies. 

April Twenty-sixth. 

Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are 
such, * * * and the mind goes antagonizing on, 
and never prospers but by fits. 

April Twenty-seventh. 

Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth 
taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to 
isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and 
the future. 

April Twenty-eighth. 

Human life is made up of two elements, power and 
form, and the proportion must be invariably kept, if 
we would have it sweet and sound. Each of these 
elements in excess makes a mischief as hurtful as its 
defect. 



(38) 



EXPERIENCE. 
April Twenty-ninth. 

EVER mind the ridicule, never 
mind the defeat: up again, old 
heart! it seems to say, there 

is victory yet for all justice. 
April Thirtieth. 

The ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest 
skepticism, that nothing is of us or our works, that 
all is of God. 




139) 



PRUDENCE 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "PRUDENCE" 



(41) 



PRUDENCE. 




May First. 

E write from aspiration and 
antagonism, as well as from 
experience. We paint those 
qualities which we do not 
possess. 

May Second. 



Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the 
science of appearances. It is the outmost action of 
the inward life. 

May Third. 

Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate 
when it is the Natural History of the soul incarnate, 
when it unfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow 
scope of the senses. 

May Fourth. 

Nature punishes any neglect of prudence. 
May Fifth. 

We are instructed by these petty experiences which 
usurp the hours and years. 

(43) 




PRUDENCE. 

May Sixth. 

RUDENCE does not go behind 
nature and ask whence it is? 
It takes the laws of the world 
whereby man's being is condi 
tioned, as they are, and keeps 
these laws that it may enjoy 
their proper good. 

May Seventh. 

Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose 
their value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural 
and innocent action. 

May Eighth. 

Let a man keep the law, any law, and his way 
will be strown with satisfactions. 

May Ninth. 

If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, 
instead of honey it will yield us bees. 

May Tenth. 

The application of means to ends ensures victory, 
and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shop 
than in the tactics of party or of war. 

(44) 




PRUDENCE. 

May Eleventh. 

UR American character is 
marked with a more than aver 
age delight in accurate per 
ception, which is shown by the 
currency of the by-word, "No 
Mistake." 

May Twelfth. 

The domestic man, who loves no music so well as 
his kitchen clock and the airs which the logs sing to 
him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which 
others never dream of. 

May Thirteenth. 

He that despiseth small things will perish by little 
and little. 

/ 

May Fourteenth. 

As much wisdom may be expended on a private 
economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may 
be drawn from it. 

May Fifteenth. 

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. 

(45) 



PRUDENCE. 




May Sixteenth. 

Y diligence and self-command 
let him put the bread he eats 
at his own disposal, and not at 
that of others, that he may not 
stand in bitter and false rela 
tions to other men ; for the best 
good of wealth is freedom. 

May Seventeenth. 

Poetry and prudence should be coincident. Poets 
should be law-givers ; that is, the boldest lyric inspira 
tion should not chide and insult, but should announce 
and lead the civil code and the day's work. 

May Eighteenth. 

Let him learn that everything in nature, even motes 
and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that 
which he sows he reaps. 

May Nineteenth. 

The eye of prudence may never shut. 
May Twentieth. 

On him who scorned the world, as he said, the 
scorned world wreaks its revenge. 

(46) 



PRUDENCE. 




May Twenty-first. 

RANKNESS proves to be the 
best tactics, for it invites 
frankness, puts the parties on 
a convenient footing, and 
makes their business a friend 
ship. 

May Twenty-second. 

Keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the 
scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. 

May Twenty-third. 

A man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless 
of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently un 
fortunate, querulous, a "discomfortable cousin," a 
thorn to himself and others. 

May Twenty-fourth. 

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide 
in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. 

May Twenty-fifth. 

Trust men and they will be true to you, treat them 
greatly and they will show themselves great. 

(47) 



PRUDENCE. 




May Twenty-sixth. 

HE good husband finds method 
as efficient in the packing of 
fire-wood in a shed or in the 
harvesting of fruits in the cel 
lar, as in the files of the De 
partment of State. 

May Twenty-seventh. 

The prudence which secures an outward well-being 
is not to be studied by one set of men, whilst heroism 
and holiness are studied by another, but they are rec 
oncilable. 

May Twenty-eighth. 

He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts 
of life with any serenity must screw himself up to 
resolution. 

May Twenty-ninth. 

Our words and actions to be fair must be timely. 
A gay and pleasant sound is the whetting of the 
scythe in the mornings of June ; yet what is more lone 
some and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mow 
er's rifle when it is too late in the season to make 
hay? 

(48) 



PRUDENCE. 



May Thirtieth. 




ET him practice the minor vir 
tues. How much of human 
life is lost in waiting! Let 
him not make his fellow crea 
tures wait. How many words 
and promises are promises of 
conversation! Let his be 
words of fate. 



May Thirty-first. 

It (prudence) 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 in 
tellect. 



(4?) 



LOVE 



SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "LOVE" 



(51) 



LOVE. 




June First. 

ATURE * * * in the first 
sentiment of kindness antici 
pates already a benevolence 
which shall lose all particular 
regards in its general light. 
The introduction of this felic 
ity is in a private and tender 
relation of one to one, which is 
the enchantment of human life. 

June Second. 



This passion of which we speak, though it begin 
with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or rather 
suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow old. 

June Third. 

Love is omnipresent in nature as motive and re 
ward. Love is our highest word and the synonym of 
God. 

June Fourth. 

Every soul is a celestial Venus to every other souL 
June Fifth. 

Like a certain divine rage (this enchantment) seizes 
on man at one period and works a revolution in his 
mind and body. 

(S3) 



LOVE. 




June Sixth. 

T matters not, whether we at 
tempt to describe the passion 
at twenty, at thirty, or at 
eighty years. He who paints 
it at the first period will lose 
some of its later, he who paints 
it at the last, some of its earlier 
traits. 

June Seventh. 



Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfill 
ments. Each of its joys ripens into a new want. 

June Eighth. 

Alas! I know not why, but infinite compunctions 
embitter in mature life all the remembrances of bud 
ding sentiment, and cover every beloved name. 

June Ninth. 

Everything is beautiful seen from the point of the 
intellect, or as truth. But all is sour if seen as ex- 
perien 

June Tenth. 

Details are always melancholy; the plan is seemly 
and noble. 

(54) 



LOVE. 




June Eleventh. 



ITH thought, with the ideal, is 
immortal hilarity, the rose of 
joy. Round it all the muses 
sing. But with names and 
persons and the partial inter 
ests of to-day and yesterday is 
grief. 

June Twelfth. 



Every heart has its sabbaths and jubilees in which 
the world appears as a hymeneal feast. 

June Thirteenth. 

All mankind love a lover. The earliest demonstra 
tions of complacency and kindness are nature's most 
winning pictures. 

June Fourteenth. 

It is strange how painful is the actual world the 
painful kingdom of time and place. There dwells care 
and canker and fear. 

June Fifteenth. 

He touched the secret of the matter who said of 
love, "All other pleasures are not worth its pains." 

(55) 




LOVE. 

June Sixteenth. 

E our experience in particulars 
what it may, no man ever for 
got the visitations of that 
power to his heart and brain, 
which created all things new. 

June Seventeenth. 

Beauty is ever that divine thing the ancients es 
teemed it. It is, they said, the flowering of virtue. 

June Eighteenth. 

Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a 
heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have 
the countenance of the beloved object. 

June Nineteenth. 

The passion re-makes the world for the youth. 
* * * Nature grows conscious. Every bird on 
the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and 
soul. 

June Twentieth. 

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. 
(56) 



LOVE. 




June Twenty-first. 

HE statue is then beautiful when 
it begins to be incomprehensi 
ble, when it is passing out of 
criticism * * * but de 
mands an active imagination to 
go with it, and to say what it 
is in the act of doing. 

June Twenty-second. 

The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion 
which this topic of personal relations usurps in the con 
versation of society. What do we wish to know of 
any worthy person so much as how he sped in the 
history of this sentiment. 

June Twenty-third. 

The Deity sends the glory of youth before the soul, 
that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its 
recollection of the celestial good and fair. 

June Twenty-fourth. 

It is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the nar 
row nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering 
spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges, 
* * * and so lights up the whole world and all 
nature with its generous flame. 

(57) 



LOVE. 




June Twenty-fifth. 

HAT which is so beautiful and 
attractive as these relations, 
must be succeeded and sup 
planted only by what is more 
beautiful, and so on forever. 

June Twenty-sixth. 

We are often made to feel that our affections are 
but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, 
the objects of the affections change as the objects of 
thought do. 

June Twenty-seventh. 

There are moments when the affections rule and 
absorb the man and make his happiness dependent 
upon a person or persons. But in health the mind is 
presently seen again. 

June Twenty-eighth. 

By conversation with that which is in itself excel 
lent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes 
to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker ap 
prehension of them. 

(58) 



LOVE. 



June Twenty-ninth. 



F poetry the success is not at 
tained when it lulls and satis 
fies, but when it astonishes 
and fires us with new en 
deavors after the unattainable. 

June Thirtieth. 

We need not fear that we can lose anything by the 
progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the 
end. 




(59) 



CIRCLES 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "CIRCLES" 



(61) 



CIRCLES. 




July First. 

HE eye is the first circle; the 
horizon which it forms is the 
second; and throughout nature 
this primary picture is re 
peated without end. 

July Second. 



Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that 
around every circle another can be drawn. 

July Third. 

St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle 
whose center was everywhere and its circumference 
nowhere. 

July Fourth. 

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is 
fluid and volatile. * * * Our Globe seen by God 
is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law 
dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. 

July Fifth. 

Men walk as prophecies of the next age. 
(63) 



CIRCLES. 




July Sixth. 

VERYTHING looks permanent 
until its secret is known. A 
rich estate appears to women 
and children a firm and lasting 
fact; to a merchant, one easily 
created out of any materials, 
and easily lost. 

July Seventh. 



The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from 
a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides out 
wards to new and larger circles and that without end. 

July Eighth. 

The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel 
without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth 
of the individual soul. 

July Ninth. 

How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease 
to interest us when we find their limitations. 

July Tenth. 

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on 
this planet. 

(64) 



CIRCLES. 




July Eleventh. 

HERE is not a piece of science 
but its flank may be turned to 
morrow; there is not any liter 
ary reputation * * * that 
may not be revised and con 
demned. 

July Twelfth. 



Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. 
The length of the discourse indicates the distance of 
thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. 

July Thirteenth. 

Every man is not so much a workman in the world 
as he is a suggestion of that he should be. 

July Fourteenth. 

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that 
a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out- 
generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. 

July Fifteenth. 

Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, 
but all things renew, germinate and spring. 

(65) 



CIRCLES. 



July Sixteenth. 




HE key to every man is his 
thoughts. Sturdy and defy 
ing though he look, he has a 
helm which he obeys, which 
is the idea after which all his 
facts are classified. He can 
only be reformed by showing 
him a new idea which com 
mands his own. 



July Seventeenth. 

No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-mor 
row in the light of new thoughts. 

July Eighteenth. 

The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once 
come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with 
him. 

July Nineteenth. 

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to 
day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, 
when we are building up our being. 

July Twentieth. 

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure 
it against a higher love. 

(66) 




CIRCLES. 

July Twenty-first. 

ONVERSATION is a game of 
circles. In conversation we 
pluck up the termini which 
bound the common of silence 
on every side. 

July Twenty-second 

, Nothing great was ever achieved without enthu 
siasm. 

July Twenty-third. 

In nature every moment is new; the best is al 
ways swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is 
sacred. 

July Twenty-fourth. 

The sweet of nature is love ; yet if I have a friend I 
am tormented by my imperfections. * * * If he 
were high enough to slight me, then could I love him, 
and rise by my affection to new heights. 

July Twenty-fifth. 

The great man is not convulsible. He is so much 
that events pass over him without much impression. 

(67) 



CIRCLES. 




July Twenty-sixth. 

HE things which are dear to 
men at this hour are so on ac 
count of the ideas which have 
emerged on their mental hori 
zon, and which cause the pres 
ent order of things, as a tree 
bears its apples. 

July Twenty-seventh. 

The continual effort to raise himself above himself, 
to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in 
a man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet can 
not forgive the approver. 

July Twenty-eighth. 

Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yes 
terday, a great hope, a sea to swim in ; now, you have 
found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if 
you never see it again. 

July Twenty-ninth. 

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire 
is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our pro 
priety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do 
something without knowing how or why ; in short, to 
draw a new circle. 

(68) 



CIRCLES. 



July Thirtieth. 




VERY personal consideration 
that we allow costs us heav 
enly state. We sell the 
thrones of angels for a short 
and turbulent pleasure. 

July Thirty-first. 

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's 
beauty another's ugliness ; one man's wisdom another's 
folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher 
point of view. 



THE OVER-SOUL 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "THE OVER-SOUL" 



THE OVER-SOUL. 




August First. 

HE philosophy of six thousand 
years has not searched the 
chambers and magazines of 
the soul. In its experiments 
there has always remained, in 
the last analysis, a residuum it 
could not resolve. 



August Second. 

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. 
Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which 
constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to 
all other experiences. 

August Third. 

I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a 
higher origin for events than the will I call mine. 

August Fourth. 

Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always 
our being is descending into us from we know not 
whence. 

August Fifth. 

There is a difference between one and another hour 
of life in their authority and subsequent effect. 

(73) 



THE OVER-SOUL. 




August Sixth. 

HEN it (the soul) breathes 
through his intellect, it is gen 
ius; when it breathes through 
his will, it is virtue; when it 
flows through his affection, it 
is love. 

August Seventh. 



How dear, how soothing to man arises the idea of 
God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of 
our mistakes and disappointments! 

August Eighth. 

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act 
of the soul. * * * Ever it inspires awe and aston 
ishment. 

August Ninth. 

The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world 
always before her, leaving worlds always behind her. 

August Tenth. 

O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is 
spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to 
hear, will vibrate on thine ear. 

(74) 




THE OVER-SOUL. 

August Eleventh. 

O the soul in her pure action all 
the virtues are natural, and not 
painfully acquired. Speak to 
his heart, and the man becomes 
suddenly virtuous. 

August Twelfth. 

A wise old proverb says, "God conies to see us 
without bell." 

August Thirteenth. 

Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of 
love, of aspiration, are already on a platform that com 
mands the sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action 
and grace. 

August Fourteenth. 

Before the great revelations of the soul, Time, 
Space and Nature shrink away. 

August Fifteenth. 

She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor special 
ties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul; all else 
is idle weeds for her wearing. 

(75) 




THE OVER-SOUL. 

August Sixteenth. 

HE weakness of the will begins 
when the individual would be 
some thing of himself. All 
reform aims in some one par 
ticular to let the great soul 
have its way through us; in 
other words, to engage us to 
obey. 

August Seventeenth. 

The heart which abandons itself to the Supreme 
Mind finds itself related to all its works, and will travel 
a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. 

August Eighteenth. 

The most exact calculator has no prescience that 
somewhat incalculable may not baulk the very next 
moment. 

August Nineteenth. 

The whole intercourse of society, its trade, its re 
ligion, its friendships, its quarrels, is one wide judi 
cial investigation of character. 

August Twentieth. 

That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily 
but involuntarily. 

(76) 




THE OVER-SOUL. 
August Twenty-first. 

EAL so plainly with man and 
woman as to constrain the ut 
most sincerity and destroy all 
hope of trifling with you. It 
is the highest compliment you 
can pay. 

August Twenty-second. 

More and more the surges of everlasting nature en 
ter into me, and I become public and human in my 
regards and actions. 

August Twenty-third. 

The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. 
August Twenty-fourth. 

Some thoughts always find us young and keep us 
so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and 
eternal beauty. 

August Twenty-fifth. 

He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought to 
him never counts his company. When I sit in that 
presence who shall dare to come in? 

(77) 



THE OVER-SOUL. 




August Twenty-sixth. 

VERY friend whom not thy 
fantastic will but the great and 
tender heart in thee craveth, 
shall lock thee in his embrace. 
And this, because the heart in 
thee is the heart of all. 

August Twenty-seventh. 

It is not in an arbitrary "decree of God," but in the 
nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of 
to-morrow; * * * by this veil which curtains 
events it instructs the children of men to live in to 
day. 

August Twenty-eighth. 

The soul that ascendeth to worship the great God, 
is plain and true; * * * does not want admira 
tion ; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest ex 
perience of the common day. 

August Twenty-ninth. 

The least activity of the intellectual powers redeems 
us in a degree from the influence of time. In sickness, 
in languor, give us a strain of poetry or a profound 
sentence, and we are refreshed. 

(78) 



THE OVER-SOUL. 

August Thirtieth. 

HE action of the soul is oftener 
in that which is felt and left 
unsaid than in that which is 
said in any conversation. 

August Thirty-first. 

We owe many valuable observations to people who 
are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing 
without effort which we want and have long been 
hunting in vain. 




(79) 



CHARACTER 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "CHARACTER" 



CHARACTER. 




September First. 



E cannot find the smallest part 
of the personal weight of 
Washington, in the narrative 
of his exploits. * * * but 
somewhat resided in these 
men which begot an expecta 
tion that outran all their per 
formance. 



September Second. 

This is that which we call Character, a reserved 
force which acts directly by presence, and without 
means. 

September Third. 

The purest literary talent appears at one time great, 
at another time small, but character is of a stellar and 
undiminishable greatness. 

September Fourth. 

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of 
character. 

September Fifth. 

The reason why this or that man is fortunate, is not 
to be told. It lies in the man ; that is all anybody can 
tell you about it. 

(83) 



CHARACTER. 




September Sixth. 

IGHER natures overpower 
lower ones by affecting with a 
certain sleep. The faculties 
are locked up and offer no re 
sistance. Perhaps that is the 
universal law. 

September Seventh. 

A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the 
True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole. 
* * * he is thus the medium of the highest influ 
ence to all who are not on the same level. 

September Eighth. 

Men of character are the conscience of the society 
to which they belong. 

September Ninth. 

Truth is the summit of being: justice is the appli 
cation of it to affairs. 

September Tenth. 

Our action should rest mathematically on our sub 
stance. In nature, there are no false valuations. 

(84) 



CHARACTER. 



September Eleventh. 




HE covetousness * * * which 
saddens me, when I ascribe it 
to society, is my own. I am 
always environed by myself. 
On the other part, rectitude is 
a perpetual victory, celebrated 
* * * by serenity, which 
is joy fixed or habitual. 



September Twelfth. 

Justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth 
to make itself believed. Character is this moral order 
seen through the medium of an individual. 

September Thirteenth. 

How often has the influence of a true master real 
ized all the tales of magic ! A river of command seems 
to run down from his eyes into all those who behold 
him. 

September Fourteenth. 

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a 
phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized. 

September Fifteenth. 

Those who live to the future must always appear 
selfish to those who live to the present. 

(85) 



CHARACTER. 

September Sixteenth. 




T is not enough that the intel 
lect should see the evils, and 
their remedy. We shall still 
postpone our existence, nor 
take the ground to which we 
are entitled, whilst it is only 
a thought and not a spirit that 
incites us. 



September Seventeenth. 

New actions are the only apologies and explana 
tions of old ones, which the noble can bear to offer 
or receive. 

September Eighteenth. 

The history of those gods and saints which the 
world has written, and then worshiped, are documents 
of character. 

September Nineteenth. 

When the high cannot bring up the low to itself, it 
benumbs it, as man charms down the resistance of the 
lower animals. Men exert on each other a similar 
occult power. 

September Twentieth. 

Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, 
and whenever the vein of thought reaches down into 
the profound, there is no danger from vanity. 

(86) 




CHARACTER. 
September Twenty-first. 

HARACTER is nature in the 
highest form. * * * This 
masterpiece is best when no 
hands but nature's have been 
laid on it. 

September Twenty-second. 

If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit 
down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory 
of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve 
you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you 
with blessings. 

September Twenty-third. 

Men should be intelligent and earnest. They must 
also make us feel, that they have a controlling happy 
future, opening before them, which sheds a splendor 
on the passing hour. 

September Twenty-fourth. 

Character wants room; must not be crowded on by 
persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press 
of affairs, or on few occasions. It needs perspective, 
as a great building. 

(87) 



CHARACTER. 




September Twenty-fifth. 

VERY trait which the artist re 
corded in stone, he had s,een 
in life, and better than his 
copy. We have seen many 
counterfeits, but we are born 
believers in great men. 

September Twenty-sixth. 

I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying 
as the profound good understanding, which can sub 
sist * * * between two virtuous men, each of 
whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. 

September Twenty-seventh. 

When men shall meet as they ought, each a bene 
factor, * * * clothed with thoughts, with deeds, 
with accomplishments, it should be the festival of na 
ture which all things announce. 

September Twenty-eighth. 

We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence 
that is only measured by its works. Love is inex 
haustible, and if its estate is wasted, its granary 
emptied, still cheers and enriches. 



(88) 



CHARACTER. 



September Twenty-ninth. 



RIENDS also follow the laws of 
divine necessity; they gravi 
tate to each other, and cannot 
otherwise : 

"When each the other shall 

avoid 

Shall each by each be most 
enjoyed." 



September Thirtieth. 

We shall one day see that the most private is the 
most public energy, that quality atones for quantity, 
and grandeur of character acts in the dark, and suc 
cors them who never saw it. 




(89) 



NATURE 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "NATURE" 



(91) 



NATURE. 



October First. 




HE rounded world is fair to see, 
Nine times folded in mystery: 
Though baffled seers cannot 

impart 
The secret of its laboring 

heart, 
Throb thine with Nature's 

throbbing Breast, 
And all is clear from East to 

West." 



October Second. 

A man can only speak, so long as he does not feel his 
speech to be partial and inadequate. 

October Third. 

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in 
which we have given heed to some natural object. 

October Fourth. 

Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty 
breaks in everywhere. 

October Fifth. 

The difference between landscape and landscape is 
small, but there is great difference in the beholders. 

(93) 



NATURE. 



October Sixth. 




ERE (at the gates of the forest) 
we find nature to be the cir 
cumstance which dwarfs every 
other circumstance, and judges 
like a god all men that come 
to her. 



October Seventh. 

The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad 
hills and warm wide fields. To have lived through all 
its sunny hours, seems longevity enough. 

October Eighth. 

No man is quite sane ; each has a vein of folly in his 
composition. 

October Ninth. 

We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act 
hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. 

October Tenth. 

The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual 
morning, and is stimulating and heroic. * * * 
The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live 
with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. 

(94) 



NATURE. 



October Eleventh. 




E who knows the most, he who 
knows what sweets and virtues 
are in the ground, the water, 
the plants, the heavens, and 
how to come at these enchant 
ments, is the rich and royal 
man. 



October Twelfth. 

Only as far as the Masters of the world have called 
in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of 
magnificence. 

October Thirteenth. 

Nature is always consistent though she feigns to 
contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws and 
seems to transcend them. 

October Fourteenth. 

Every moment instructs, and every object: for wis 
dom is infused into every form. * * * we did not 
guess its essence until after a long time. 

October Fifteenth. 

The hunger for wealth, which reduces the planet to 
a garden, fools the eager pursuer. 

(95) 



NATURE. 




October Sixteenth. 



( HE stars at night stoop down 
over the brownest, homeliest 
common, with all the spiritual 
magnificence which they shed 
on the Campagna, or on the 
marble deserts of Egypt. 



October Seventeenth. 

The reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes, 
the musical * * * south wind, * * * these 
are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. 

October Eighteenth. 

We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In 
every landscape the point of astonishment is the meet 
ing of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the 
first hillock as well as from the Alleghanies. 

October Nineteenth. 

There are days which occur in this climate, at al 
most any season of the year, wherein the world 
reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly 
bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature 
would indulge her offspring. 



(96) 



NATURE. 



October Twentieth. 




HE discovery that wisdom has 
other tongues and ministers 
than we, that though we 
should hold our peace, the 
truth would not the less be 
spoken, might check injuri 
ously the flames of our zeal. 



October Twenty-first. 

The beauty of nature must always seem unreal and 
mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that 
are as good as itself. 

October Twenty-second. 

Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved 
as the City of God, although, or rather because there 
is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is 
underneath it: it wants men. 

October Twenty-third. 

It is an odd jealousy : but the poet finds himself not 
near enough to his object. * * * What splendid 
distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveli 
ness in the sunset! But who can go where they are 
or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon? 



(97) 



NATURE. 




October Twenty-fourth. 

ATURE is the incarnation of a 
thought, and turns to a 
thought again, as ice becomes 

water and gas. 
October Twenty-fifth. 

"Spirit that lurks each form within 
Beckons to spirit of its kin; 
Self-kindled every atom glows, 
And hints the future which it owes." 

October Twenty-sixth. 

No man can write anything, who does not think that 
what he writes is for the time the history of the world ; 
or do anything well who does not esteem his work to 
be of importance. 

October Twenty-seventh. 

After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and 
furies of its hours ; and though we are always engaged 
with particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring 
with us to every experiment the innate universal laws. 

(98) 



NATURE. 



October Twenty-eighth. 




HE moral sensibility which 
makes Edens and Tempes so 
easily, may not be always 
found, but the material land 
scape is never far off. We can 
find these enchantments with 
out visiting Como Lake or the 
Madeira Islands. 



October Twenty-ninth. 

We live in a system of approximations. Every end 
is prospective of some other end, which is also tempo 
rary, a round and final success no where. 

October Thirtieth. 

We are escorted on every hand through life by 
spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait 
for us. 

October Thirty-first. 

To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast 
promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret 
is untold. 



(99) 



NOMINALIST* REALIST 

SELECTED GEMS FROM 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S 
ESSAY "NOMINALIST AND REALIST" 



(101) 




NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 
November First. 



E have such exorbitant eyes that 
on seeing the smallest arc we 
complete the curve, and when 
the curtain is lifted * * * 
we are vexed to find that no 
more was drawn, than just 
that fragment of arc which we 
first beheld. 



November Second. 

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily 
find, but symmetrical men never. 

November Third. 

All persons exist to society by some shining trait 
of beauty or utility, which they have. 

November Fourth. 

A personal influence is an IGNIS FATUUS. * * * 
the Will-o'-the-wisp vanishes if you go too near, van 
ishes if you go too far, and only blazes at one angle. 

November Fifth. 

Beautiful details we must have, or no artist: but 
they must be means and never other. The eye must 
not lose sight for a moment of the purpose. 

(103) 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 
November Sixth. 




T is bad enough, that our 
geniuses cannot do anything 
useful, but it is worse that no 
man is fit for society who has 
fine traits. He is admired at 
a distance, but he cannot come 
near without appearing a 
cripple. 



November Seventh. 

All our poets, heroes, and saints fail utterly in some 
one or in many parts to satisfy our idea, fail to draw 
out spontaneous interest, and so leave us without any 
hope of realization but in our own future. 

November Eighth. 

Our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our 
life, and divest it of poetry. 

November Ninth. 

There is nothing we cherish and strive to draw to 
us, but in some hour we turn and rend it. 

November Tenth. 

Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. 
There is no one who does not exaggerate. 

(104) 




NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 
November Eleventh. 



ENCE the immense benefit of 
party in politics, as it reveals 
faults of character in a chief, 
which the intellectual force of 
the person, with ordinary op 
portunity and not hurled into 
aphelion by hatred, could not 
have been seen. 



November Twelfth. 

Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and the cool 
reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in it. When 
they grow older they respect the argument. 

November Thirteenth. 

Wherever you go a wit like your own has been be 
fore you, and has realized its thought. 

November Fourteenth. 

Nature keeps herself whole, and her representation 
complete in the experience of each mind. She suffers 
no seat to be vacant in her college. 

November Fifteenth. 

All things show us, that on every side we are very 
near to the best. 

(105) 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 

November Sixteenth. 




OR, rightly, every man is 
a channel through which 
heaven floweth, and, whilst I 
fancied I was criticising him, 
I was censuring or rather ter 
minating my own soul. 



November Seventeenth. 

The rotation which whirls every leaf and pebble to 
the meridian, reaches to every gift of man, and we all 
take turns at the top. 

November Eighteenth. 

As long as any man exists there is some need of 
him; let him fight for his own. 

November Nineteenth. 

Our affections and our experience urge that every 
individual is entitled to honor, and a very generous 
treatment is sure to be repaid. 

November Twentieth. 

What is best in each kind is an index of what should 
be the average of that thing. 

(106) 




NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 
November Twenty-first. 

T is commonly said by farmers, 
that a good pear or apple costs 
no more time or pains to rear 
than a poor one; so I would 
have no work of art, no speech, 
or action, or thought, or 
friend, but the best. 

November Twenty-second. 

The men of fine parts protect themselves by solitude 
or by courtesy; or by satire or by an acid worldly 
manner, each concealing as he best can, his incapacity 
for useful association, but they want either love or self- 
reliance. 

November Twenty-third. 

How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all 
that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling that 
all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to 
know each other, although they use the same 
words ! 

November Twenty-fourth. 

If you criticise a fine genius the odds are that you 
are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are 
censuring your own caricature of him. 

(107) 




NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 

November Twenty-fifth. 

JF we were not of all opinions ! if 
we did not in any moment 
shift the platform on which we 
stand, and look and speak from 
another ! 

November Twenty-sixth. 

Each man's genius being nearly and affectionately 
explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his na 
ture is found to be immense. 

November Twenty-seventh. 

It is the secret of the world that all things subsist, 
and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and 
afterwards return again. 



November Twenty-eighth. 

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring 
of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting we beguile the 
time with jokes, with sleep, with eating and with 
crimes. 

(108) 



NOMINALIST AND REALIST. 

November Twenty-ninth. 

E fancy men are individuals; so 
are pumpkins; but every 
pumpkin in the Held goes 
through every point of pump 
kin history. 

November Thirtieth. 

It is all idle talking; as much as a man is a whole, 
so is he also a part ; and it were partial not to see it. 




I ioo) 



I NTELLECT 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON'S ESSAY "INTELLECT" 



(in) 



INTELLECT. 



December First. 




ATER dissolves wood and iron 
and salt; air dissolves water; 
electric fire dissolves air, but 
the intellect dissolves fire, 
gravity, laws, method and the 
subtlest unnamed relations on 
nature in its resistless men 
struum. 



December Second. 

Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect con 
structive. 

December Third. 

Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural 
history of the intellect, but what man has yet been 
able to mark the steps and boundaries of that trans 
parent essence? 

December Fourth. 

Intellect is void of affection, and sees an object as 
it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. 

December Fifth. 

A truth, separated by the intellect, is no longer a 
subject of destiny. We behold it as a god upraised 
above care and fear. 

(113) 



INTELLECT. 




December Sixth. 

VERY man beholds his human 
condition with a degree of 
melancholy. As a ship aground 
is battered by the waves, so 
man, imprisoned in mortal 
life, lies open to the mercy of 
coming events. 

December Seventh. 

Nature shows all things formed and bound. The 
intellect pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects 
intrinsic likeness between remote things and reduces 
all things into a few principles. 

December Eighth. 

The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. 
December Ninth. 

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not 
threaten us but makes us intellectual beings. 

December Tenth. 

All our progress is an unfolding like the vegetable 
bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then 
a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. 

("4) 



INTELLECT. 




December Eleventh. 

ONG prior to the age of reflec 
tion is the thinking of the 
mind. Out of darkness it came 
insensibly into the marvelous 
light of to-day. 

December Twelfth. 

And so any fact in our life, * * * disentangled 
from the web of our unconsciousness, becomes an ob 
ject impersonal and immortal. It is the past re 
stored, but embalmed. 

December Thirteenth. 
We have little control over our thoughts. 
December Fourteenth. 

In the fog of good and evil affections it is hard for 
man to walk forward in a straight line. 

December Fifteenth. 

The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with 
facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lan 
tern and read the inscriptions. 

(us) 



INTELLECT. 




December Sixteenth. 

E are the prisoners of ideas. 
They catch us up for moments 
into their heaven and so fully 
engage us that we take no 
thought for the morrow. 

December Seventeenth. 

In the most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tor 
mentor's life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, 
unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can 
take himself up by his own ears. 

December Eighteenth. 

God enters by a private door into every individual. 
December Nineteenth. 

If we consider what persons have stimulated and 
profited us, we shall perceive the superiority of the 
spontaneous or intuitive principle over the arith 
metical or logical. 

December Twentieth. 

What is the hardest task in the world? To think, 
(116) 



INTELLECT. 




December Twenty-first. 

RUST the instinct to the end, 
though you can render no rea 
son. It is vain to hurry it. 
By trusting it to the end, it 
shall ripen into truth and you 
shall know why you believe. 

December Twenty-second. 

Each mind has its own method. A true man never 
acquires after college rules. What you have aggre 
gated in a natural manner surprises and delights when 
it is produced. 

December Twenty-third. 

The considerations of time and place, of you and 
me, of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's 
minds. Intellect separates the fact considered, from 
you, from all local and personal reference, and dis 
cerns it as if it existed for its own sake. 

December Twenty-fourth. 

The constructive intellect produces thoughts, sen 
tences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the gen 
eration of the mind, the marriage of thought with na 
ture. 

("7) 



INTELLECT. 




December Twenty-fifth. 

ESUS says, Leave father, mother, 
house and lands, and follow 
Me. Who leaves all, receives 
more. This is as true intel 
lectually as morally. 

December Twenty-sixth. 

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You 
cannot with your best deliberation and heed come so 
close to any question as your spontaneous glance will 
bring you whilst you rise from your bed, * * * 
after meditating the matter before sleep on the previ 
ous night. 

December Twenty-seventh. 

Not by any conscious imitation of particular forms 
are the grand strokes of the painter executed, but by 
repairing to the fountain-head of all forms in his mind. 

December Twenty-eighth. 

If the constructive powers are rare and it is given 
to few men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of 
this descending holy ghost, and may well study the 
laws of its influx. 

("8) 



INTELLECT. 
December Twenty-ninth. 

OD offers to every mind its 
choice between truth and re 
pose. Take which you please, 

you can never have both. 
December Thirtieth. 

He in whom the love of repose predominates will 
accept the first creed, the first philosophy. * * * 
He gets rest, commodity and reputation ; but he shuts 
the door of truth. 

December Thirty-first. 

The ancient sentence said, Let us be silent, for so are 
the gods. Silence is a solvent that destroys person 
ality, and gives us leave to be great and universal. 




(U9) 



HERE ENDS "THROUGH THE 
YEAR WITH EMERSON" AS 
COMPILED BY EDITH 
E. WOOD AND PUB 
LISHED BY DODGE 
PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 
N. Y. 



(121) 



!SffiSSiS28S* LIBRARY FACILITY 




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