Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diary, 1834

To Goethe there was no trifle. Glauber picked up what everybody else threw away. Cuvier made much of humblest facts. The lower tone you take, the more flexible your…

" Newton," says Fourier, " knew not yet the perfections of the universe." " What La Place called great was really great." I read in Her- bert a beautiful verse, a…

I cannot read of the jubilee of Goethe, and of such a velvet life, without a sense of incongruity.

Michel Angelo's life, in the Library of Use- ful Knowledge ; and his poverty, by Signor Radici in the Retrospective Review, volume xiii. These elevate my respect…

How bften our nature is conscious of and la- bours with its own limits ! In the very act of pre- tension it is oppressed with secret humiliation.

I have read Corinne with as much emotion as a book can excite in me."" A true representation of the tragedy of woman, which yet (thanks to the mysterious…

I have been to Plymouth and stood on the Rock, and felt that it was grown more important by the growth of this nation in the minutes that I stood there. But…

Self-contradiction is the only wrong ; For, by the laws of spirit, in the right Is every individual character That acts in strict consistence with itself.

It occurs that the distinction should be drawn in treating of Friendship between the aid of com- modity which our friends yield us, as in hospitality, gifts,…

Vaccinium tenellum, Pyrus ovalis,^ Anemone ne- morosa, Fragaria virginiana : the day is as good for these as for oaks and corn. The air vibrates with equal facility…

Fontenelle said, if men should see the princi- ples of nature laid bare, they would cry, "What! is this all ? " How simple they are. How is the wonder perpetually…

The Idea according to which the Universe is made is wholly wanting to us ; is it not ? Yet it may or will be found to be constructed on as harmonious and perfect a…

Well, my friend, are you not yet convinced that you should study plants and animals ? ' To be sure the reasons are not very mighty : but words.

The men of this world say ever of the Thinker, "How knoweth this man these things, hav- ing never learned ? " Ho ! every one that thirst- eth ! come ye to the…

Languages as discipline, much reading as an additional atmosphere or two, to gird the loins and make the muscles more tense. It seems time lost for a grown man to…

The lower tone you take, the more flexible your voice is.

What perpetual working and counterworking in us, so that many good actions spring from bad motives, and many bad "actions from good mo- tives. Verily. Then how…

The solitary bird that sung in the pine tree reminded me of one talker who has nothing to say alone, but when friends come, and the con- versation grows loud, is…

What a charm does Wilhelm Meister spread over society, which we were just getting to think odious. And yet, as I read the book to-day and thought of Goethe as the…

Carlyle says Society is extinct. Be it so. So- ciety existed in a clan ; existed in Alaric and Attila's time, in the Crusades, in the Puritan Conventicles. Very…

In September, the roads and woods were full of crickets, and as fast as one falls by the way, the rest eat him up.

The elections. Whilst it is notorious that the Jackson party is the Bad party in the cities and in general in the country, — except in secluded districts where a…

The root and seed of democracy is the doc- trine. Judge for yourself. Reverence thyself It is the inevitable effect of that doctrine, where it has any effect (which…

Goethe says of Lavater, that, "it was fearful to live near a man to whom every boundary within which Nature has seen fit to circumscribe us was clear."

Yesterday saw I at Waltham the eclipse of the Sun, 1045 digits. The fact that a prediction is fulfilled is the best part of it ; the preternatural half-night which…

The age of puberty is a crisis in the life of the man worth studying. It is the passage from the Unconscious to the Conscious ; from the sleep of the Passions to…

Do you imagine that because I do not say Luther's creed, all his works are an offence to me ? Far otherwise. I can animate them all that they shall live to me. I…

A good chapter might be writ of Optical De- ceptions. A sort of disappointment is felt by an ingenious man on hearing opinions and truths congenial to his own…

Him I call rich, that soul I call endowed, whether in man or woman, who by poverty or affliction or love has been driven home so far as to make acquaintance with…