Monday, June 14, 2010

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures. Book One (3)


1803 -1882. New York: Literary Classics of the United States. 1983.

Why read it? Emerson’s unit of thought is the epigrammatic sentences. Emerson writes a poetic prose. Emerson’s beliefs—that each man shares in the Over-Soul, or God, that man possesses, within himself, the means to all knowledge—expressed in his memorable sentences, are of central importance in the history of American culture. The only trouble is most of his ideas are half-truths.

Ideas:
“…that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in the universe, and lets no offense go unchastised.” p. 292. ………. “…the proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth, without qualification.” p. 293. ………. “…if you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other fastens itself around your own.” p. 293……….. “You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.” p. 294. ………. “our strength grows out of our weakness.” p. 298. ………. “Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances..” p. 299. ………. “Nothing seems so easy as to speak and to be understood.” p. 312. ………. “If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes.” p. 313. ………. “No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however near to his eyes is the object.” p. 313. ………. “Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.” p. 313. ………. “Take the book into your two hands, and read your eyes out; you will never find what I find.” p. 314. ………. “The man may teach by doing, and not otherwise.” p. 316.

To be continued.

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