Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diary, 1842

The Dial is to be sustained or ended, and I must settle the question, it seems, of its life or death. I wish it to live, but do not wish to be its life. Neither do…

To-day Nelly thinks "the snow is on the ground and the trees so white as a tablecloth and so white as parched corn."

" The peculiarity of divine souls is shown by Parmenides to consist in their being younger and at the same time older both than themselves and other things." —…

Alcott brought here this day a manuscript pa- per written by his brother Junius, which had three good things in it, — first, that it was a Prayer, written in this…

Having once learned that in some one thing, although externally small, greatness might be contained, so that in doing that, it was all one as if I had builded a…

Here is a proposition for the formation of a good neighborhood : Hedge shall live at Con- cord, and Mr. Hawthorne; George Bradford shall come then; and Mrs. Ripley…

The only poetic fact in the life of thousands and thousands is their death. No wonder they specify all the circumstances of the death of an- other person.

Zanoni. We must not rail if we read the book. Of all the ministers to luxury these novelwrights are the best. It is a trick, a juggle. We are cheated into laughter…

Our eagerness for anecdotes of the face, form, manners, dress, dwelling, etc., of any remarkable mind should teach us that the man should make all these anew, and…

There is reality, however, in our relations to our friend, is there not ?

A few noble victims life shows us who do and suffer with temper and proportion ; the rest are slight people, and shirk work, to use the com- mon phrase. But every…

The commercial relations of the world are so intimately drawn to London, that it seems as if every dollar in the world contributed to strengthen the English…

Boston is not quite a mean place, since in walking yesterday in the street I met George Bancroft, Horatio Greenough, Sampson Reed, Sam Ward, Theodore Parker, George…

Yesterday I read Dickens's American Notes. It answers its end very well, which plainly was to make a readable book, nothing more. Truth is not his object for a…

The trick of every man's conversation we soon learn. In one, this remorseless Buddhism lies all around, threatening with death and night. We make a little fire in…