Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diary, 1861

We have no guess what we are doing, even then when we do our best ; perhaps it will not appear for an age or two yet ; then the dim out- line of the reef and new…

I hear this morning, whilst it is snowing fast, the chickadee singing.

What magical merit belongs, over all the de- tails of any work, to the grand design ! The per- formance of steam and iron locomotive on an iron road is wonderful…

Long peace makes men routinary and gre- garious. They all walk arm in arm. Poverty, the sea, the frost, farming, hunting, the emi- grant, the soldier must teach…

Yesterday wrote to F. G. Tuckerman to thank him for his book, and praised "Rhotru- da." Ellery Channing finds two or three good lines and metres in the book, thinks…

When somebody said to Rev. Dr. Payson, " How much you must enjoy religion, since you live always in administering it," he replied, that nobody enjoyed religion less…

Wednesday, I read my lecture on Good Books to the Class.''

Read " Doctrine of Leasts " at Mrs. Park- man's. Should have cited, but did not, Swed- enborg's saying, " To construct a philosophy is nothing more than to give the…

The war goes on educating us to a trust in the simplicities, and to see the bankruptcy of all narrow views. The favourite pet policy of a district, the spicier…

Last night a pictorial dream fit for Dante. I read a discourse somewhere to an assembly, and rallied in the course of it to find that I had nearly or quite fallen…

Lately I find myself oft recurring to the ex- perience of the partiality of each mind I know. I so readily imputed symmetry to my fine geniuses, on perceiving their…

Intellect egotistical, or, much fine metaphysics is only exultation of seeing farther than the rest.

The war begins to turn, and mass to tell against activity.