Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a particularly perceptive article about Emerson in this month’s Harper’s. If you’re a subscriber, you can read it online, but if not, I’d seek it out. Entitled “Between insanity and fat dullness: How I became an Emersonian,” Lopate, by way of reviewing the two new Library of America volumes of selections from Emerson’s journals (see the bibliography for more on these books, and other Emerson volumes in the Library of America series), explains how reading 1,900 pages of Emerson made him realize that, “In middle age, I find myself an unrepentant Emersonian. I simply like the man…”

Man is a foolish slave who is busy in forging his own fetters. Sometimes he lifts up his eyes for a moment, admires freedom, & then hammers the rivets of his chain. Who does not believe life to be an illusion when he sees the daily, yearly, livelong inconsistency that men indulge, in thinking so well & doing so ill.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:137

Men so universally draw their characters after the pattern of their times that great regard is due to any who spurning the character & humour of an ignoble age, act upon principles not apprehended by the vulgar.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:137

The numberless connections which ally each individual to the world seem to him by a natural delusion to be so many props giving permanency to his existence. He forgets, man in madness forgets, notwithstanding the overwhelming mass of experience in favour of the fact that these ties are all severed at once. The parade of innumerable connections, & the habits of perfect solitude sink undistinguished.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:133-4

What is the secret sorcery that has bewitched men’s souls? I will tell you. It is because men are blindly, madly attached to the present moment, and will hazard the infinite future rather than forego the gross and inconsiderable joys which are soliciting their appetites today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:119

Mistrust no more your ability, the rivalry of others, or the final event. Make speed to plan, execute, to fulfill; forfeit not one moment more in the dalliance of a sloth; for the work is vast, the time is short, and Opportunity is a headlong thing which tarries for no man’s necessities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:113

One youth among the multitudes of mankind, one grain of sand on the seashore, unknown in the midst of my contemporaries, I am hastening to put on the manly robe. From childhood the names of the great have ever resounded in my ear. And it is impossible that I should be indifferent to the rank which I mist take in the innumerable assembly of men, or that I should shut my eyes upon the huge interval which separates me from the minds which I am wont to venerate. Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of a secret Genius, and thens dreams of an unrivaled greatness. More intercourse with the world and closer acquaintance with his own faults wipes out from his fancy every trace of this majestic dream. Time, who is the rough master of the feast, comes to this conceited & highly-placed guest, and saith, ‘Friend come down to this lower seat, for thy neighbour is worthier than thou.’ Nevertheless it is not Time nor fate nor the World that is half so much his foe as the demon Indolence within him. A man’s enemies are those of his own household.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:111

A man altogether in the wrong may more easily be convinced than one half right; for when the error is pointed out he is obliged to give up the whole, at once; whereas the other, is so much the more tenacious of his opinion as he percieves [sic] it to be partly right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 2:110