Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diary, 1839

Returned last night from Plymouth, where on Thursday evening, 3 1 January, I read a lecture on Genius ; on Friday afternoon, one on Home ; and in the evening, one…

Yesterday morning, 24 February at 8 o'clock, a daughter was born to me, a soft, quiet, swarthy little creature, apparently perfect and healthy.

The memory plays a great part in settling the intellectual rank of men. A seneschal of Parnassus is Mnemosyne. Thus, am I a better scholar than one of my neighbors…

The Indo- American war of Brant and Ganse- voort, etc, illustrate as well as any other the uninventive, the inventive. All sit still in the fort, persuaded that the…

I have regard to appearance still. So am I no hero. Do'what you are doing with a single mind and utter disregard of eyes, and then what you have done before will…

Popular Christianity is far below, in its tone of teaching, the poorest moral philosophy that i839l LOW RELIGION i8i has been originally taught. The pulpit concedes…

Housekeeping. — Unroof any house, and you must find there confusion. Order is too precious and divine a thing to dwell with such fools and sinners as we all are.' .…

In reference to the philanthropies of the day, it seems better to use than to flout them. Shall it be said of the hero that he opposed all the contemporary good…

The poor madman, whipped through the world by his thoughts !

There is no history. There is only Biogra- phy. The attempt to perpetrate, to fix a thought or principle, fails continually. You can only live for yourself; your…

The laws, literature, religion, at certain times appear but a sad travestie and caricature of na- ture, and so do our modes of living.

'T is pity we should leave with the children all the romance, all that is daintiest in life, and reserve for ourselves as we grow old only the prose. Goethe fell in…

I suppose the number of reforms preached to this age exceeds the usual measure, and in- dicates the depth and universaHty of the move- ment which betrays itself by…

If a great man turn his attention to inferior natures, he will show the divine in them. . . . The stars to which loving and hoping men have added such moral…

I remembered in the wood the profuse Nature which scatters from her hand all sorts of crea- tures. At Dartmouth College, last July, was a good sheriff-like…

Guido's Aurora for a morning prayer ; so wills and so loves us Thomas Carlyle.'

You dare not say " I think," " I am," but quote St. Paul, or Jesus, or Bacon, or Locke.

Once the doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines.' ... I have no duties so peremptory as my…

Reform. — The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.' . . .

Wonderful Bettina ! The rich, inventive gen- ius of the painter must all be smothered and lost for want of the power of drawing ; and when I walk in Walden wood, as…

Night in this enchanting season is not night, but a miscellany of lights. The journeying twi- light, the half-moon, the kindling Venus, the beaming Jove, — Saturn…

Yesterday ascended Red Hill and saw our lake and Squam Lake, Ossipee, Conway, Gun- stock, and one dim summit which stood to us for the White Hills. Mrs. Cook lives…

How tedious is the perpetual self-preservation of the traveller ! His whole road is a comparison of what he sees and does at home with what he sees and does now.…

It is only by doing without Shakspear that we can do without his book. Be Shakspear, and we shall value it no longer. So it is with the holy men whose life is…

Friendship. — I do not wish to treat friend- ships daintily.' ... I have the most romantic relations precisely with my oldest friends. . . . Who is rich, who is…

Usefulness is always handsome, uselessness always vulgar. Hint a little service of the household, — a lady will instantly doit, a nurse will toss her foolish head…

A fair child went by who made me think, as others have done, that a mixture of Lethe adds to beauty.

Only this strip of paper remains to me to record my introduction to Anna Barker last Friday at Jamaica Plains.' A new person is to me ever a great event, and few…

Fact is better than fiction if only we could get pure fact. Do you think any rhetoric or any ro- mance would get your ear from one who could tell, straight on, the…

The world can never be learned by learning all its details.

In Boston I visited the gallery of Sculpture and saw the Day and Night of Michel Angelo. I find in Michel more abandon than in Mil- ton. . . . Wonderful figure and…

People hold to you as long as you please yourself with the Ideal life only as a pretty dream and concede a resistless force to the lim- itations of the same, to…

We are helped along by good and bad ; am- bition, want, vanity, and such canaille spur us to industry. I have no love for Lord Brougham, yet the recital of his…

Ward has given me the Endymion with friendliest letter.' It shall hang by Carlyle's Guido.

Unconsciousness. — Happy is he who in look- ing at the compositions of an earlier date knows that the moment wrote them, and feels no more call or right to alter…

It seems a matter of indifference what, and how, and how much, you write, if you write poetry. Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book…

My Friends. — I read with joy Sterling's noble critique on Carlyle in the Westminster Review. All intellectual ability seems to have somewhat impersonal and…