Ralph Waldo Emerson
From
: SELF-RELIANCE (EXCERPTS)
·
We
denote the primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are
Tuitions.
·
A
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen
and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great Soul has simply nothing
to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what
you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard
words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -'Ah, so you
shall be sure to be misunderstood.'- Is it so bad then to be misunderstood?
Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and
Copernicus, and Galileo and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever
took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
·
We
lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth
and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we
do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence
this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at
fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man
discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary
perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is
due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are
so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My willful actions and acquisitions
are but roving - the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my
curiosity and respect.
·
Who
has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger.
Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric
when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and
that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law
of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets,
who are not.
·
The
power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come
near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we
bereave ourselves of the love."
·
If
we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at
least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor
and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in
our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying
affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving
people with whom we converse. Say to them, '0 father, 0 mother, 0 wife, 0
brother, 0 friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto.
Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no
law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I
shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste
husband of one wife, - but these relations I must fill after a new and
unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break
myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall
be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I
will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is
holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me
and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I
will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but
not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I
do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and
mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does
this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as
well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.' -
But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and
my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments
of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they
justify me and do the same thing.
·
It
is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Traveling, whose idols are
Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They
who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so by
sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours we feel
that duty is our place. The soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home,
and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house,
or into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make men sensible by the
expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of wisdom and
virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an interloper
or a valet.
·
I
have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe for the
purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first
domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater
than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does
not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old
things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated
as they. He carries ruins to ruins.
·
Traveling
is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of
places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with
beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the
sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the
sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the
palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not
intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
·
On
my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live
wholly from within?” My friend suggested – “But these impulses may be from
below, not from above.” I replied “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I
am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil”
From: Experience
·
People
grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say.
There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we
shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be
scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know
haw shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never
introduces me into the reality. Souls never touch their objects. An innavigable
sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse
with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than
two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, - no more. I cannot get
it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my
principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to
me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, - neither
better nor worse. So it is with this calamity; it does not touch me; something
which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing
me nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me and leaves no scar. I
grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.
The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the raincoats that shed every drop.
Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with grim satisfaction,
saying ‘There at least is reality that will not dodge us.’
From: THE OVER-SOUL:
·
The
larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them
all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation
between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common
nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is
God.
·
The
action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in
that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they
unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not
yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. I
feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbours,
that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to
Jove from behind each of us.
From: MISCELLANEOUS:
·
The world
looks like a mathematical equation which – turn it how you will – balances
itself. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded,
every wrong addressed, in silence and certainty.
(Source:
Compensation)
·
Things
are in the saddle and ride mankind.
·
It
is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only
retire a little from sight and afterward return again…. Jesus is not dead – he
is very well alive; nor John, nor Paul, nor Mohamet, nor Aristotle; at times,
we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which
they go.
(Source:
Nominalist and Realist)
·
Do
the thing, and have the power.
·
The
preacher’s job is to pass life through the fire of thought.
·
Hide
your thoughts? Hide the sun and moon. They publish themselves to the universe,
They will speak through you though you were dumb. They will flow out of your
actions, your manners, your face…. If you would not be known to do a thing,
never do it; a man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain
of sand shall seem to see. – How can a man be concealed?
·
Other
world? There is no other world! The present hour is the decisive hour, and
every day is doomsday.
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