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"Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "The Poet," Essays, Second Series (1844). |
"When a god is once beguiled
By beauty of a mortal child,
And by her radiant youth delighted,
He is not fooled, but warily knoweth
His love shall never be requited."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "To Rhea," Poems (1847). |
"What he knows nobody wants.
What he knows he hides, not vaunts."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Woodnotes I," Poems (1847). |
"Men hold themselves cheap and vile; and yet a man is a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his system: he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire; he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood: they are the extension of his personality."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Beauty," The Conduct of Life (1860). |
"The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him.
"
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Character," Essays, Second Series (1844). |
"The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem,—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, &c., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end. The soul says, Eat: the body would feast. The soul says, The man and the woman shall be one flesh and one soul; the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue; the body would have the power over things to its own ends."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Compensation," Essays, First Series (1841, repr. 1847). |
"Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, culture corrects the theory of success."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Culture," The Conduct of Life (1860).
Stanley Cavell has argued that Emerson is here referring to Kant's philosophical problem of succession. That is, how can we come to know a world that appears to be a mere surface succession of images that constantly flow by us and are ever changing. As Emerson says in the opening poem to "Culture": "And the world's flowing fates in/his own mould recast." The "mould" may refer to Kant's mental categories with which he argues we organize and order the world. Emerson's response to Kant is founded, in essence, on a pun on "success" and "succession" where worldly material success has also to do with the epistemological play of phenomena. |
"There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?"
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet. English Traits, ch. 10 (1856). |
"This hard work will always be done by one kind of man; not by scheming speculators, nor by soldiers, nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson; but by men of endurance—deep-chested, long- winded, tough, slow and sure, and timely."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Farming," Society and Solitude (1870).
Edward Emerson noted that Emerson was here referring to the utopian communities of Brook Farm and Fruitlands. |
"Conversation is an evanescent relation,—no more."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Friendship," Essays, First Series (1841, repr. 1847). |
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