A Memoir of Ralph Waldo EmersonPrinted at the Riverside Press, 1887 - 809 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
admired afterwards Alcott beautiful believe Boston Boston Athenĉum boys brother William called Cambridge Carlyle Charles Charles Chauncy Christian Coleridge Collected Writings Concord DEAR AUNT discourse Divinity Hall doctrine doubt Edward Elizabeth Peabody eloquence Emer essay eyes fact faith father feel felt genius give Harvard Harvard College hear honor hope human Jesus journal learned lectures letter Liberal Liberal Christians literary living look Margaret Fuller ment mind minister Miss Mary Emerson moral mother nature never occasion opinions persons Phi Beta Kappa philosophy poem poet prayer preaching pulpit Puritan Ralph Waldo Ralph Waldo Emerson reason received religion religious Reverend Ripley says school-keeping Second Church seems sense sentiment sermon society soul speak spirit Street Sunday talk teaching things thought tion town Transcendentalism Transcendentalists truth Unitarian William Emerson William Hague young
Popular passages
Page 321 - Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.
Page 320 - In all my lectures I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man. This the people accept readily enough, and even with commendation, as long as I call the lecture Art or Politics, or Literature or the Household; but the moment I call it Religion they are shocked, though it be only the application of the same truth which they receive elsewhere to a new class of facts.
Page 361 - Most of the persons whom I see in my own house I see across a gulf; I cannot go to them nor they come to me.
Page 376 - I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered, — in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could not longer be endured, and he died of it.
Page 6 - When I was thirteen years old [he writes in his journal in 1839], my uncle Samuel Ripley one day asked me, ' How is it, Ralph, that all the boys dislike you and quarrel with you, whilst the grown people are fond of you?
Page 202 - I believe that the error of religionists lies in this, that they do not know the extent or the harmony or the depth of their moral nature; that they are clinging to little, positive, verbal, formal versions of the moral law...
Page 197 - I don't know what brought him, and we kept him one night and then he left us. I saw him go up the hill ; I did n't go with him to see him descend. I preferred to watch him mount and vanish like an angel.
Page 167 - I have sometimes thought that in order to be a good minister it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers. Were not a Socratic Paganism better than an effete superannuated Christianity...
Page 252 - The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration and in ecstasy.
Page 278 - Strange, coldwarm, attractive-repelling conversation with Margaret, whom I always admire, most revere when I nearest see, and sometimes love; yet whom I freeze and who freezes me to silence when we promise to come nearest.