Term
| “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complais |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “The time is infected with Hamlet’s unhappiness,- ‘Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’” |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “If there is any period one would desire to be born in,-is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness,-he has always the resource to live. Char |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “If there is any period one would desire to be born in,-is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness,-he has always the resource to live. Char |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,-as unfit for any handiwork or public labor, as a penknife for an axe. The so called “practical men” sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “This is bad, this is worse than it seems. Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book t |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past, -in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| “Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.” |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| ”...the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mec |
|
Definition
| Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” |
|
|
Term
| The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributi |
|
Definition
| Emerson, The Divinity School Address |
|
|
Term
| Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute |
|
Definition
| Emerson, The Divinity School Address |
|
|
Term
| Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. |
|
Definition
| Emerson, The Divinity School Address |
|
|
Term
| Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. We are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we can, |
|
Definition
| Emerson, The Divinity School Address |
|
|
Term
| Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| 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. Out upon your guarded li |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| Theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear, under different names, in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Sp |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics! Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of the divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world is a temple, whose walls are covered with emblem |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another’s, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in d |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind. Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one aga |
|
Definition
|
|
Term
| Poets are thus liberating gods. Men have really got a new sense, and found within their world, another world, or nest of worlds; |
|
Definition
|
|
