Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is more melancholy than to treat men as pawns & ninepins. If I leave out their heart, they take out mine. But speak of the soul, & always the soul will reply. To treat of the nature of things is to show his life in new glory to every man. When he sees he is no sport of circumstances, but that all nature is his friend and he is related to natures so great that if his private selfish good suffer shipwreck, yet must rejoice.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:199

“Dulness of the age.” What age was not dull? When were not the majority wicked? or such progress was ever made by society? Society is always flat & foolish. The only progress ever known was of the individual. A great wit is, at any time, great solitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:194

How we live on the outside of the world! Open the Skin, the flesh, & enter the Skeleton, touch the heart, liver, or brain of the Man and you have come no nearer to the man than when you were still outside. All this is this strange & foreign to him as to you. You have almost as much property in his body as he has. The babe is formed in the womb of the mother quite outside of her system. It is carefully guarded from any interference with her constitution. So if you go into a family where you supposed a perfect understanding & intimate bonds subsisted, you find with surprise that all are in a degree strangers to each other, that father has one interest & you another, the husband & wife observed each other’s acts & words with much of a stranger’s curiosity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:193

At the age ludicrously called the age of discretion every hopeful young man is shipwrecked. The burdensome possession of himself he cannot dispose of. Up to that hour, others have directed him & he has gone triumphantly. Then he begins to direct himself & all hope, wisdom, & power sink flat down. Sleep creeps over him & he lies down in the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:192

The man of talents who brings his poetry & eloquence to market is like a hawk which I have seen wheeling up to heaven in the face of noon—& all to have a better view of mice & moles & chickens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:191

Today came to me the first proof-sheet of “Nature” to be corrected, like a new coat, full of vexations; with the first sentence of the chapters perched like mottoes aloft in small type! The peace of the author cannot be wounded by such trifles, if he sees that the sentences are still good. A good sentence can never be put out of countenance by any blunder of compositors. It is good in text or note, in poetry or prose, as title or corollary. But a bad sentence shows all his flaws instantly by such dislocation. So that a certain sublime serenity is generated in the soul of the Poet by the annoyances of the press. He sees that the spirit may infuse a subtle logic into the parts of the piece which shall defy all accidents to break their connexion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:190

I went to Walden Pond this evening a little before sunset, and in the tranquil landscape I behold somewhat as beautiful as my own nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:189

The reason of the variety & infinity of objects is given in the doctrine that external objects are mere signs of internal essences. Therefore “every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the Soul.” That is to say, it becomes a part of the domain of Consciousness; before it was unconscious truth, now is available Knowledge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:189