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Selected Writings
From one of the greatest figures of 19th-century America...
This new edition offers a broad view of the author's finest work, featuring his critical essays, poems, and letters, plus a considerable amount of material from the Journals, including an entry discovered in 1964 in the Library of Congress.
This new edition offers a broad view of the author's finest work, featuring his critical essays, poems, and letters, plus a considerable amount of material from the Journals, including an entry discovered in 1964 in the Library of Congress.
560 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3,423 books5,297 followersRalph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 32 reviews
June 15, 2016
People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
I expect most people read Emerson in college, which I suppose is the perfect time to do so. The man seems constantly to be speaking to the young, wide-eyed, enthusiastic, hopeful liberal arts major in me. There’s just something wonderfully youthful about Emerson’s attitude; he never grew out of that adolescent feeling of omnipotence, that we can all recreate the world if we are just authentically ourselves. This sounds crass and cliché when I say it, but when Emerson says it, it’s fresh: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.”
Emerson was a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. He seemed to have a limitless supply of epigrams, which he sprinkled like a verbal Johnny Appleseed throughout his writings. And yet the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Emerson’s essays don’t coalesce into a work; they remain a jangly collection of disparate elements, like keys on a keychain. He often threatens to soar off into philosophic profundity, and the threat always proves empty. We hear a crash and a boom; yet the echo quickly fades. Really, he’s more of a prose-poet than a thinker. He hints at thoughts using pretty words, but he has no system, he employs no arguments. His work is the embodiment of a personality and an attitude.
Although I didn’t expect it, the best part of this collection were the selections from his journals. You are immediately pulled into his mind, made a spectator on his life and private thoughts. The only comparable reading experience I’ve had was Montaigne’s Essays. And indeed, Emerson admired Montaigne very much, even writing a laudatory essay on the old French sage. Emerson's description of Montaigne's prose is apt for both writers: “Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.”
His essays comprise the bulk of this collection, which were generally enjoyable, but less thrilling. In these, Emerson is typically long-winded, disorganized, and excitable. Most of the essays seem as though they lack a plan or an argument. But folded into this formless fabric were golden threads, which served to brighten the motley quilt; and just when you tire of the man, he includes a bit of writing as breathtaking as any you’ve ever read.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.
I didn’t find any of his poetry particularly compelling, save “The Rhodora,” which was lovely. I don’t think he was precise and exacting enough for meter. Besides, Emerson endears because of his artlessness, his frankness; so when he squeezes himself into verse, he looks like a man wearing a shirt a few sizes too small.
Despite all of Emerson’s flaws as a writer, I still enjoyed every minute I spent with him. For Emerson lived up to his own mantra, and followed the bent of his own mind. All of his writings are absolutely honest; he is speaking to you as an equal and a friend. For my part, I often found myself wishing I possessed a fraction his self-assuredness, his absolute comfort with himself. The man knew himself, and thus never spent time imitating others or worrying about what anyone thought of him. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, some of that might have rubbed off on me. These old, dusty classics have got to be good for something, right?
August 28, 2019
After reading Emerson’s name in three different places in one week, I decided I should probably finally read him and see why people seem to like him so much. Well, I read his journal, his essays and his poems and I can tell you, I liked nothing about any of them. The only thing I liked was that he didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought of him. I found his journal depressing, his essays full of God and you couldn’t count on his poems to rhyme! I did like the poem, Waldeinsamkeit, but didn’t care for Threnody. Ugh! Who wants to read a poem about a little boy’s death? NOT me. So, to each his own. I’ve read as much of Ralph Waldo Emerson as I ever want to. The next time I want classic poetry I’ll read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who I thoroughly enjoy.
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July 10, 2019Perhaps this is what transcendentalism is - a love for freedom, beauty, and love. The writings are wide and each is short. The titles are often minimalist: fate, circles just like the old masters Bacon and Montaigne who Emerson showers with praise. Emerson also exchanges appreciation with his fellow thinker, Thoreau. But thinker is the wrong word: Emerson is a poet and one who stopped growing in his early twenties. He jumps from one idea to another. Reading him is like staying forever young while the world ages and grows evil fangs at the same time.
April 17, 2025
Emerson’s ideas became the basis of American transcendentalism and have a lasting influence on American culture today. They emerged out of European literary and aesthetic Romanticism during a time of growing resistance to the traditional structures of Christianity in New England.
To avoid making this too long I’ll only write about a few of the themes from this collection of Selected Essays (1836–1860) here. One that evolves throughout is his treatment of nature. Across the essays Emerson transitions from earlier Romantic appeals to nature as a source of divine knowledge to a view more closely aligned with the nihilism and disillusionment of later modernists—particularly regarding nature’s indifference.
The former conception of nature is expressed in Thoreau’s Walden (1854), while the latter anticipates something like shattering of the mirror of nature you see in the “Time Passes” section of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), or in the clattering of pebbles in Arnold’s Dover Beach (1867).
Although nature is a prominent theme, as in my review of Thoreau’s Walden (1854), Emerson’s protégé, I’m most interested in the transcendentalist’s individualism—their belief that truth and morality are found not through social consensus or institutional authority, but through solitude, intuition, and self-reflection. In Self-Reliance (1841), Emerson condemns the “little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines” that allow values to be prescribed by a society which “everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”
The morality each uncovers through reflection is individual, not universal, and doesn’t necessarily involve combating injustice. Emerson writes on the subject of charity: “Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong […]—I shall have the manhood to withhold.” All refusals of acts of convention are permissible: “I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.”
My critique of both is that the apathy for politics and community they display in withdrawing from society makes them complicit in the very evils they critique like slavery and industrialization by electing not to fight against it. Also, ironically, their faith in an internal moral compass veers into the kind of dogmatic thinking they claim to reject.
Although Emerson was influenced by European romanticism, he also intern influenced European literature back. A great example of this is Nietzsche who in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885) shares Emerson’s view of the importance of solitude and self-reliance. To briefly compare the two, a key difference is that, if there were a moral law for Emerson and Thoreau, it would be democratic, based on their belief that all men have equal potential for achievement. Nietzsche, on the other hand, outlines a much more aristocratic conception of individualism, where a natural hierarchy should be advanced based on inherent abilities or nobilities. I wonder how much of each of their expression of individualism was influenced their respective cultures and political climates. Nietzsche also is a better philosopher and recognizes the need to apply the teaching that solitude and self-reflection affords i .e. become “down-goers and over-goers”. Applying his analogy, would mean down from the mountain for Muir, or over from the woods for Thoreau.
I read Emerson and Thoreau to try to understand their supposed role in modern environmentalism and here’s where I’ve landed: Many have acknowledged how their reverence for nature helped bring conservation to the public consciousness through actors like Muir and Olmsted. But I’d guess this specific contribution could’ve been accomplished by the romantics alone, which were being printed and disseminated in the US at the time. Considering only their new ideas, transcendentalist teachings—with nationless, anarchic individuals of subjective conscience who oppose institutions and collective values—likely contributed to Americans’ current tendency to pursue depoliticized, personalized approaches like green consumerism in lieu of seriously engaging with questions of political transformation. If that’s true, we should rethink Emerson and Thoreau’s legacy as leaders of contemporary environmentalism and consider their contribution to existing failures.
These are famous enough to warrant reading them for their own sake. Outside of this, for em, the only value of reading Walden is to understand his cultural contribution to the aesthetic of American ruggedness, solitude /manliness or romanticizing the rural. All the otherwise interesting ideas come from Emerson. If you read either and just want some thoughtless nature writing as a break I’d recommend Muir or Dillard, Mary Oliver Is good and very accessible as a poet too.
To avoid making this too long I’ll only write about a few of the themes from this collection of Selected Essays (1836–1860) here. One that evolves throughout is his treatment of nature. Across the essays Emerson transitions from earlier Romantic appeals to nature as a source of divine knowledge to a view more closely aligned with the nihilism and disillusionment of later modernists—particularly regarding nature’s indifference.
In Nature (1836): “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. […] I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
In Experience (1844): “the whole frame of things preaches indifferency. Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy.”
The former conception of nature is expressed in Thoreau’s Walden (1854), while the latter anticipates something like shattering of the mirror of nature you see in the “Time Passes” section of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), or in the clattering of pebbles in Arnold’s Dover Beach (1867).
Although nature is a prominent theme, as in my review of Thoreau’s Walden (1854), Emerson’s protégé, I’m most interested in the transcendentalist’s individualism—their belief that truth and morality are found not through social consensus or institutional authority, but through solitude, intuition, and self-reflection. In Self-Reliance (1841), Emerson condemns the “little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines” that allow values to be prescribed by a society which “everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”
The morality each uncovers through reflection is individual, not universal, and doesn’t necessarily involve combating injustice. Emerson writes on the subject of charity: “Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong […]—I shall have the manhood to withhold.” All refusals of acts of convention are permissible: “I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.”
My critique of both is that the apathy for politics and community they display in withdrawing from society makes them complicit in the very evils they critique like slavery and industrialization by electing not to fight against it. Also, ironically, their faith in an internal moral compass veers into the kind of dogmatic thinking they claim to reject.
Although Emerson was influenced by European romanticism, he also intern influenced European literature back. A great example of this is Nietzsche who in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885) shares Emerson’s view of the importance of solitude and self-reliance. To briefly compare the two, a key difference is that, if there were a moral law for Emerson and Thoreau, it would be democratic, based on their belief that all men have equal potential for achievement. Nietzsche, on the other hand, outlines a much more aristocratic conception of individualism, where a natural hierarchy should be advanced based on inherent abilities or nobilities. I wonder how much of each of their expression of individualism was influenced their respective cultures and political climates. Nietzsche also is a better philosopher and recognizes the need to apply the teaching that solitude and self-reflection affords i .e. become “down-goers and over-goers”. Applying his analogy, would mean down from the mountain for Muir, or over from the woods for Thoreau.
I read Emerson and Thoreau to try to understand their supposed role in modern environmentalism and here’s where I’ve landed: Many have acknowledged how their reverence for nature helped bring conservation to the public consciousness through actors like Muir and Olmsted. But I’d guess this specific contribution could’ve been accomplished by the romantics alone, which were being printed and disseminated in the US at the time. Considering only their new ideas, transcendentalist teachings—with nationless, anarchic individuals of subjective conscience who oppose institutions and collective values—likely contributed to Americans’ current tendency to pursue depoliticized, personalized approaches like green consumerism in lieu of seriously engaging with questions of political transformation. If that’s true, we should rethink Emerson and Thoreau’s legacy as leaders of contemporary environmentalism and consider their contribution to existing failures.
These are famous enough to warrant reading them for their own sake. Outside of this, for em, the only value of reading Walden is to understand his cultural contribution to the aesthetic of American ruggedness, solitude /manliness or romanticizing the rural. All the otherwise interesting ideas come from Emerson. If you read either and just want some thoughtless nature writing as a break I’d recommend Muir or Dillard, Mary Oliver Is good and very accessible as a poet too.
October 26, 2008
This was pretty good, but it was a little bit like being in a hallmark store. About every third paragraph an aphorism jumps out and tries to make me buy an inspirational coffee cup. Hallmark should include the subversive context on their calendars...
February 26, 2010
Pretty much a mood read for me. Philosophical renderings on self reliance and dependence at the lowest level, the individual. A good choice for reading for long stretches of uninterrupted time.
October 2, 2011
The book's in two parts: Journals and Letters, and Essays and Addresses. I've only read the first part so far, but intend to return the second "someday".
Anyway, I enjoyed the first part. Many of the entries are fairly short, and I couldn't help but think about twitter/blogs.
p. 41: Satisfaction with our lot is not consistent with the intentions of God & with our nature. It is our duty to aim at change, at improvement, at perfection. It is our duty to be discontented, with the measure we have of knowledge & of virtue, to forget the things behind & press toward those before.
45: The religion that is afraid of science dishonours God & commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empire but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting & removing a diseased religion & making way for truth, & itself is presently purged into the draught.
46: The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.
47: It is the best part of the man, I sometimes think, that revolts most against his being the minister. His good revolts from official goodness. If he never spoke or acted but with the full consent of his understanding, if the whole man acted always, how powerful would be every act & every word. Well then or ill then how much power he sacrifices by conforming himself to say & do in other folks' time instead of in his own! The difficulty is that we do not make a world of our own but fall into institutions already made & have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.
52: But every true man stands on the top of the world. He has a majestic understanding, which is in its right place the servant of the reason, &employed ever to bridge over the gulf between the revelations of his Reason, his Vision, & the facts within in the microscopic optics of the calculators that surround him. Long may he live.
--
Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely & peculiarly my work. I will say at Public Lectures & the like, those things which I have meditated for their own sake & not for the first time with a view to that occasion. If otherwise you select a new subject & labor to make a good appearance on the appointed day, it is so much lost time to you & lost time to your hearer. It is a parenthesis in your genuine life. You are your own dupe, & for the sake of conciliating your audience you have failed to edify them & winning their ear you have really lost their love & gratitude.
53: The age of puberty is a crisis in the life of a man worth studying. It is the passage from the Unconscious to the Conscious; from the sleep of the Passions to their rage; from careless receiving to cunning providing; from beauty to use; from omnivorous curiosity to anxious stewardship; from faith to doubt; from maternal Reason to hard short-sighted Understanding; from Unity to disunion; the progressive influences of poetry, eloquence, love, regeneration, character, truth, sorrow, and of search for an Aim, & the contest for Property.
55: No man ever grew so learned as to exhaust the significance of any part of nature. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
63-4: A very good discourse on Marriage might be written by him who would preach the nature of things. Let him teach how fast the frivolous external fancying fades out of the mind. Let him teach both husband & wife to mourn for the rapid ebb of inclination not one moment, to yield it no tear. As this fancy picture, these fata-Morgana, this cloud scenery fades forever the solid mountain chains whereupon the sky rests in the far perspective of the soul begin to appear. The parties discover every day the deep & permanent character each of the other as a rock foundation on which they may safely build their nuptial bower. They learn slowly that all other affect than that which rests upon what they are is superstitious & evanescent, that all concealment, all pretension is wholly vain, that to the amiable & useful & heroic qualities which inhere in the other belong a certain portion of love, of pleasure, of veneration which is exactly measured as the attraction of a pound of iron, that there is no luck nor witchcraft nor destiny nor divinity in marriage that can produce affection but only those qualities that by their nature extort it, that all love is mathematical.
79: Housekeeping. If my garden had only made me acquainted with the muckworm, the bugs, the grasses & the swamp of plenty in August, I should willingly pay a free tuition. But every process is lucrative to me far beyond its economy. For the like reason keep house. Whoso does, opens a shop in the heart of all trades, professions & arts so that upon him these shall all play. By keeping house I go to a universal school where all knowledges are taught me & the price of tuition is my annual expense.
84: Education... We all are involved in the condemnation of words, an Age of words. We are shut up in schools & college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years & come out at least with a bellyfull of words & do not know a thing.
85: The mob are always interesting. We hate editors, preachers, & all manner of scholars, and fashionists. A blacksmith, a truckman, a farmer we follow into the barroom & watch with eagerness what they shall say, for such as the, do not speak because they are expected to, but because they have somewhat to say.
86: Do something, it matters little or not at all whether it be in the way of what you call your profession or not, so it be in the plane or coincident with the axis of your character. The reaction is always proportioned to the action, and it is the reaction that we want. Strike the hardest blow you can, & you can always do this by work which is agreeable to your nature. This is economy.
99: What a pity that we cannot curse & swear in good society. Cannot the stinging dialect of the Sailors be domesticated? It is the best rhetoric and for a hundred occasions those forbidden words are the only good ones.
102: Each soul is a soul or an individual in virtue of its having or I may say being a power to translate the universe into some particular language of its own; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance, why then, into a trade, or an art, of a science or a mode of living, or a conversation, or a character, or an influence - into something great, human, & adequate which, if it do not contain in itself all the dancing, painting, & poetry that ever was, it is because the man is faint hearted & untrue.
116: ... do I never, I think, fear death. It seems to me so often a relief, a rendering up of responsibility, a quittance of so many vexatious trifles.
--
It is greatest to believe & to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, & makes the world he lives in.
120: Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee and do not try to make the Universe a blind alley.
126: I am shamed in reflecting on the little new skill the years bring me, at the power trifles have over me, at the importance of my dinner, & my dress, & my house, more than at the slenderness of my acquisitions.
127: The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly & desperately drunk with a certain belief; it agitates & tears him, & almost bereaves him of the power of articulation. Then it rushes from him as in short abrupt screams, in torrents of meaning. The possession by the subject of his mind is so entire, that it ensures an order of expression which is the order of nature itself, and so the order of greatest force & inimitable by any art. And the main distinction between him & other well-graced actors is the conviction communicated to the hearer by every word, that his mind is contemplating a whole, and inflamed with the contemplation of the whole, & that the words & sentences uttered by him, however, admirable, fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole, which he sees, & means that you should see.
128: The which the soul seeks is resolution into Being above form, out of Tartarus & out of Heaven; liberation from existence is its name.
130: Life is the sleep of the soul: as soon as a soul is tired, it looks out for a body as a bed; enters into a body in the season of dentition, & sleeps seventy years.
--
I see not how we can live except alone. Trenchant manners, a sharp decided way will prove a lasting convenience. Society will coo & claw & caress. You must curse & swear a little: they will remember it, & it will do them good. What if they are wise & fine people? I do not want your silliness, though you be Socrates, and if you indulge them, all people are babyish. Curse them.
132: Teachers. The teacher should be the complement of the pupil; now for the most part they are earth's diameters wide of each other. A college professor should be elected by setting all the candidates loose on a miscellaneous gang of young men taken at large from the street. He who could get the ear of these youths after a certain number of hours, or of the greatest number of these youths should be professor. Let him see if he could interest these rowdy boys in the meaning of a list of words.
134: The artist must be sacrificed. The child had her basket full of berries, but she looked sadly tired. The scholar is pale. Schiller shuns to learn French that he may keep the purity of his German idiom. Herschel must live in the observatory & draw on his night-cap when the sun rises, & defend his eyes for nocturnal use. Michael Angelo must paint Sistine Chapels, till he can no longer read except by holding the book over his head. Nature deals with all her offspring so. See the poor moths & flies, lately so vigorous, now on the wall or the trunk of the tree, exhausted, dried up, & presently blown away. Men likewise. They must put their lives into the sting they give. What is a man good for without enthusiasm? What is enthusiasm but this daring of ruin for its object? There are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls; we are not the less drawn to them. The moth flies into the flame of the lamp, & Swedborg must solve the problem though he be crazed & killed.
--
Patriotism is balderdash. Our side, our state, our town is boyish enough. But it is true that every foot of soil has its proper quality, that the grape on either side of the same fence has its own flavor, and so every acre on the globe, every group of people, every point of climate has its own moral meaning whereof it is the symbol. For such a patriotism let us stand.
137: A curious example of the rudeness and inaccuracy of thought is the inability to distinguish between the private & the universal consciousness. I never make that blunder when I write, but the critics who read impute their confusion to me.
157: If Government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches the true law of its action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
161: The lesson of these days is the vulgarity of wealth. We know that wealth will vote for the same thing which the worst & meanest of the people vote for. Wealth will vote for rum, will vote for tyranny, will vote for slavery, will vote against the ballot, will vote against international copyright, will vote against schools, colleges, or any high direction of public money.
162: Fortune & Hope! I've made my port, // Farewell, ye twin deceivers; // Ah! many a times I've been your sport; // Go, cozen new believers.
164: A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home & look up his manuscripts to know.
166: ... and he is no master who cannot vary his forms, & carry his own end triumphantly through the most difficult.
168-9: Because our education is defective, because we are superficial & ill-read, we were forced to make the most of that position, of ignorance; to idealize ignorance. Hence America is a vast Know-Nothing party, & we disparage books, & cry up intuition. With a few clever men we have made a reputable thing of that, & denouncing libraries & severe culture, & magnifying the motherwit swagger of bright boys from the country colleges, we have even come so far as to deceive every body, except ourselves, into an admiration of unlearning and inspiration forsooth.
174: It is impossible to extricate oneself from the questions in which our age is involved. you can no more keep out of politics than out of the frost.
Anyway, I enjoyed the first part. Many of the entries are fairly short, and I couldn't help but think about twitter/blogs.
p. 41: Satisfaction with our lot is not consistent with the intentions of God & with our nature. It is our duty to aim at change, at improvement, at perfection. It is our duty to be discontented, with the measure we have of knowledge & of virtue, to forget the things behind & press toward those before.
45: The religion that is afraid of science dishonours God & commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empire but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting & removing a diseased religion & making way for truth, & itself is presently purged into the draught.
46: The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.
47: It is the best part of the man, I sometimes think, that revolts most against his being the minister. His good revolts from official goodness. If he never spoke or acted but with the full consent of his understanding, if the whole man acted always, how powerful would be every act & every word. Well then or ill then how much power he sacrifices by conforming himself to say & do in other folks' time instead of in his own! The difficulty is that we do not make a world of our own but fall into institutions already made & have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.
52: But every true man stands on the top of the world. He has a majestic understanding, which is in its right place the servant of the reason, &employed ever to bridge over the gulf between the revelations of his Reason, his Vision, & the facts within in the microscopic optics of the calculators that surround him. Long may he live.
--
Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely & peculiarly my work. I will say at Public Lectures & the like, those things which I have meditated for their own sake & not for the first time with a view to that occasion. If otherwise you select a new subject & labor to make a good appearance on the appointed day, it is so much lost time to you & lost time to your hearer. It is a parenthesis in your genuine life. You are your own dupe, & for the sake of conciliating your audience you have failed to edify them & winning their ear you have really lost their love & gratitude.
53: The age of puberty is a crisis in the life of a man worth studying. It is the passage from the Unconscious to the Conscious; from the sleep of the Passions to their rage; from careless receiving to cunning providing; from beauty to use; from omnivorous curiosity to anxious stewardship; from faith to doubt; from maternal Reason to hard short-sighted Understanding; from Unity to disunion; the progressive influences of poetry, eloquence, love, regeneration, character, truth, sorrow, and of search for an Aim, & the contest for Property.
55: No man ever grew so learned as to exhaust the significance of any part of nature. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
63-4: A very good discourse on Marriage might be written by him who would preach the nature of things. Let him teach how fast the frivolous external fancying fades out of the mind. Let him teach both husband & wife to mourn for the rapid ebb of inclination not one moment, to yield it no tear. As this fancy picture, these fata-Morgana, this cloud scenery fades forever the solid mountain chains whereupon the sky rests in the far perspective of the soul begin to appear. The parties discover every day the deep & permanent character each of the other as a rock foundation on which they may safely build their nuptial bower. They learn slowly that all other affect than that which rests upon what they are is superstitious & evanescent, that all concealment, all pretension is wholly vain, that to the amiable & useful & heroic qualities which inhere in the other belong a certain portion of love, of pleasure, of veneration which is exactly measured as the attraction of a pound of iron, that there is no luck nor witchcraft nor destiny nor divinity in marriage that can produce affection but only those qualities that by their nature extort it, that all love is mathematical.
79: Housekeeping. If my garden had only made me acquainted with the muckworm, the bugs, the grasses & the swamp of plenty in August, I should willingly pay a free tuition. But every process is lucrative to me far beyond its economy. For the like reason keep house. Whoso does, opens a shop in the heart of all trades, professions & arts so that upon him these shall all play. By keeping house I go to a universal school where all knowledges are taught me & the price of tuition is my annual expense.
84: Education... We all are involved in the condemnation of words, an Age of words. We are shut up in schools & college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years & come out at least with a bellyfull of words & do not know a thing.
85: The mob are always interesting. We hate editors, preachers, & all manner of scholars, and fashionists. A blacksmith, a truckman, a farmer we follow into the barroom & watch with eagerness what they shall say, for such as the, do not speak because they are expected to, but because they have somewhat to say.
86: Do something, it matters little or not at all whether it be in the way of what you call your profession or not, so it be in the plane or coincident with the axis of your character. The reaction is always proportioned to the action, and it is the reaction that we want. Strike the hardest blow you can, & you can always do this by work which is agreeable to your nature. This is economy.
99: What a pity that we cannot curse & swear in good society. Cannot the stinging dialect of the Sailors be domesticated? It is the best rhetoric and for a hundred occasions those forbidden words are the only good ones.
102: Each soul is a soul or an individual in virtue of its having or I may say being a power to translate the universe into some particular language of its own; if not into a picture, a statue, or a dance, why then, into a trade, or an art, of a science or a mode of living, or a conversation, or a character, or an influence - into something great, human, & adequate which, if it do not contain in itself all the dancing, painting, & poetry that ever was, it is because the man is faint hearted & untrue.
116: ... do I never, I think, fear death. It seems to me so often a relief, a rendering up of responsibility, a quittance of so many vexatious trifles.
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It is greatest to believe & to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, & makes the world he lives in.
120: Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee and do not try to make the Universe a blind alley.
126: I am shamed in reflecting on the little new skill the years bring me, at the power trifles have over me, at the importance of my dinner, & my dress, & my house, more than at the slenderness of my acquisitions.
127: The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly & desperately drunk with a certain belief; it agitates & tears him, & almost bereaves him of the power of articulation. Then it rushes from him as in short abrupt screams, in torrents of meaning. The possession by the subject of his mind is so entire, that it ensures an order of expression which is the order of nature itself, and so the order of greatest force & inimitable by any art. And the main distinction between him & other well-graced actors is the conviction communicated to the hearer by every word, that his mind is contemplating a whole, and inflamed with the contemplation of the whole, & that the words & sentences uttered by him, however, admirable, fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole, which he sees, & means that you should see.
128: The which the soul seeks is resolution into Being above form, out of Tartarus & out of Heaven; liberation from existence is its name.
130: Life is the sleep of the soul: as soon as a soul is tired, it looks out for a body as a bed; enters into a body in the season of dentition, & sleeps seventy years.
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I see not how we can live except alone. Trenchant manners, a sharp decided way will prove a lasting convenience. Society will coo & claw & caress. You must curse & swear a little: they will remember it, & it will do them good. What if they are wise & fine people? I do not want your silliness, though you be Socrates, and if you indulge them, all people are babyish. Curse them.
132: Teachers. The teacher should be the complement of the pupil; now for the most part they are earth's diameters wide of each other. A college professor should be elected by setting all the candidates loose on a miscellaneous gang of young men taken at large from the street. He who could get the ear of these youths after a certain number of hours, or of the greatest number of these youths should be professor. Let him see if he could interest these rowdy boys in the meaning of a list of words.
134: The artist must be sacrificed. The child had her basket full of berries, but she looked sadly tired. The scholar is pale. Schiller shuns to learn French that he may keep the purity of his German idiom. Herschel must live in the observatory & draw on his night-cap when the sun rises, & defend his eyes for nocturnal use. Michael Angelo must paint Sistine Chapels, till he can no longer read except by holding the book over his head. Nature deals with all her offspring so. See the poor moths & flies, lately so vigorous, now on the wall or the trunk of the tree, exhausted, dried up, & presently blown away. Men likewise. They must put their lives into the sting they give. What is a man good for without enthusiasm? What is enthusiasm but this daring of ruin for its object? There are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls; we are not the less drawn to them. The moth flies into the flame of the lamp, & Swedborg must solve the problem though he be crazed & killed.
--
Patriotism is balderdash. Our side, our state, our town is boyish enough. But it is true that every foot of soil has its proper quality, that the grape on either side of the same fence has its own flavor, and so every acre on the globe, every group of people, every point of climate has its own moral meaning whereof it is the symbol. For such a patriotism let us stand.
137: A curious example of the rudeness and inaccuracy of thought is the inability to distinguish between the private & the universal consciousness. I never make that blunder when I write, but the critics who read impute their confusion to me.
157: If Government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches the true law of its action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
161: The lesson of these days is the vulgarity of wealth. We know that wealth will vote for the same thing which the worst & meanest of the people vote for. Wealth will vote for rum, will vote for tyranny, will vote for slavery, will vote against the ballot, will vote against international copyright, will vote against schools, colleges, or any high direction of public money.
162: Fortune & Hope! I've made my port, // Farewell, ye twin deceivers; // Ah! many a times I've been your sport; // Go, cozen new believers.
164: A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home & look up his manuscripts to know.
166: ... and he is no master who cannot vary his forms, & carry his own end triumphantly through the most difficult.
168-9: Because our education is defective, because we are superficial & ill-read, we were forced to make the most of that position, of ignorance; to idealize ignorance. Hence America is a vast Know-Nothing party, & we disparage books, & cry up intuition. With a few clever men we have made a reputable thing of that, & denouncing libraries & severe culture, & magnifying the motherwit swagger of bright boys from the country colleges, we have even come so far as to deceive every body, except ourselves, into an admiration of unlearning and inspiration forsooth.
174: It is impossible to extricate oneself from the questions in which our age is involved. you can no more keep out of politics than out of the frost.
December 15, 2020
It's hard to give more than 2 stars to a book that I frequently found boring, precious and dated. Read only a selection of the selected writings. Reading them all seemed not worth the time. Emerson almost always wrote too long, and his philosophical speculations and pronouncements tended toward air-filled eccentricity. Better when he wrote about the concrete rather than the abstract: almost moved up to 3 stars after reading the incisive chapter on the Fugitive Slave Law. Not bad in some character sketches too, although the one on Thoreau once again seemed too long, and impossibly adulatory (keeping in mind that Thoreau may have been as remarkable as Emerson claimed).
Actually read the 1950 Modern Library College Editions paperback. The introduction by Brooks Atkinson serves as a useful guide, but also reads like a futile attempt to persuade readers that the contents are both very good and important. Emerson's essays are more useful now as historical markers than as literature, despite having a recognizable style. Among other things, a number of the essays and copies of speeches seem to merge the styles of the spoken and printed word. You'd have to be a real fan to spend any time on the poems.
Actually read the 1950 Modern Library College Editions paperback. The introduction by Brooks Atkinson serves as a useful guide, but also reads like a futile attempt to persuade readers that the contents are both very good and important. Emerson's essays are more useful now as historical markers than as literature, despite having a recognizable style. Among other things, a number of the essays and copies of speeches seem to merge the styles of the spoken and printed word. You'd have to be a real fan to spend any time on the poems.
February 16, 2024
I first read a few of these essays when I was a sophomore, which seems like the perfect age to do so. When life is full of newness and potential, and we are making choices as to who we are going to become.
I read a little Emerson again a few years later during one of the anniversaries, when there was some Emerson focused events go on.
This reading comes in my very long project of re-reading through the canon in chronological order. And, this time, some resonated and some didn't. You can't accuse him of consistency. Some ideas seemed immature or disproven by the subsequent centuries, while others remain intoxicating. Clearly reading Emerson is still essential to understanding the American character.
One line that really resonated in my reading today was that there are always folks who think they know better how to do your job. Since he was clergy, that really connected with my own experience.
I read a little Emerson again a few years later during one of the anniversaries, when there was some Emerson focused events go on.
This reading comes in my very long project of re-reading through the canon in chronological order. And, this time, some resonated and some didn't. You can't accuse him of consistency. Some ideas seemed immature or disproven by the subsequent centuries, while others remain intoxicating. Clearly reading Emerson is still essential to understanding the American character.
One line that really resonated in my reading today was that there are always folks who think they know better how to do your job. Since he was clergy, that really connected with my own experience.
October 18, 2023
Emerson’s eloquence, eminent quotability and passion for each of us to experience the transcendent joy that results from connecting to our Highest Self will leave you in awe.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well… To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson from The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The 19th century Transcendental philosopher.
In my spiritual family tree, Emerson occupies the great great+ grandfather slot (right above Campbell and Maslow). :)
I truly love the man.
You can feel his energy emanating from his powerful essays and if you haven’t read his work yet, I highly recommend it. I’d suggest you start with Self-Reliance and then maybe Nature, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Heroism, and Circles—all of which are available on the web with a quick google search. To dive deeper, I recommend the hardcover Modern Library edition of The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson .
If you’re like me, his eloquence, eminent quotability and passion for each of us to experience the transcendent joy that results from connecting to our Highest Self will often leave you in awe.
Some of my favorite big ideas from this book include:
1. Enthusiasm - Invite God to your house.
2. Trust Thyself - Iron strings.
3. Be Godlike! - Cast off common motives.
4. Don’t Follow - Lead. And leave a trail.
5. Cowards & God - Cowards needs not apply.
6. A Central Idea - What organizes your life?
7. Take Action!! - How’s now?
8. Good Luck - And hard work.
9. Friendships. - Beautiful compensations.
10. Nature Isn’t Capricious - Dream it. Do it.
11. Reaping a Destiny - Thoughts. Acts. Habits. Character. Destiny.
12. Zigzag Lines - Learn to love ‘em.
13. Be Inconsistent
14. Nature's Compensation
15. Envy & Imitation
16. Nature & Geniuses
I’ve summarized those Big Ideas in a video review that you can watch here.
I’ve also added The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson to my collection of Philosopher’s Notes--distilling the Big Ideas into 6-page PDF and 20-minute MP3s on 600+ of the BEST self-development books ever. You can get access to all of those plus a TON more over at heroic.us.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well… To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson from The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The 19th century Transcendental philosopher.
In my spiritual family tree, Emerson occupies the great great+ grandfather slot (right above Campbell and Maslow). :)
I truly love the man.
You can feel his energy emanating from his powerful essays and if you haven’t read his work yet, I highly recommend it. I’d suggest you start with Self-Reliance and then maybe Nature, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Heroism, and Circles—all of which are available on the web with a quick google search. To dive deeper, I recommend the hardcover Modern Library edition of The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson .
If you’re like me, his eloquence, eminent quotability and passion for each of us to experience the transcendent joy that results from connecting to our Highest Self will often leave you in awe.
Some of my favorite big ideas from this book include:
1. Enthusiasm - Invite God to your house.
2. Trust Thyself - Iron strings.
3. Be Godlike! - Cast off common motives.
4. Don’t Follow - Lead. And leave a trail.
5. Cowards & God - Cowards needs not apply.
6. A Central Idea - What organizes your life?
7. Take Action!! - How’s now?
8. Good Luck - And hard work.
9. Friendships. - Beautiful compensations.
10. Nature Isn’t Capricious - Dream it. Do it.
11. Reaping a Destiny - Thoughts. Acts. Habits. Character. Destiny.
12. Zigzag Lines - Learn to love ‘em.
13. Be Inconsistent
14. Nature's Compensation
15. Envy & Imitation
16. Nature & Geniuses
I’ve summarized those Big Ideas in a video review that you can watch here.
I’ve also added The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson to my collection of Philosopher’s Notes--distilling the Big Ideas into 6-page PDF and 20-minute MP3s on 600+ of the BEST self-development books ever. You can get access to all of those plus a TON more over at heroic.us.
January 16, 2020
some of it was a bit rough going as the sentences and ideas are complex and sometimes dense but he is a good man to spend time with. it's interesting to see how little we've changed over time and how corrupt politicians were always at the fore.
March 22, 2014
There is a process in the mind very analogous to crystallization in the mineral kingdom. I think of a particular fact of singular beauty or interest. In thinking of it I am led to many more thoughts which show themselves first partially and afterwards more fully. But in the multitude of them I see no order. There is no beginning, there is no method. Leave them now and return to them again. Domesticate them in your mind, do not force them into arrangement too hastily and presently you shall find they will take their own order. And the order they assume is divine, it is God's architecture.
Every form is the history of the thing. Every thing is a monster till we know what it is for.
Knowledge is Pain.
It is never quite so dismal weather out of doors as it appears from the house window. Neither is the hardship of campaining so dreary as it seems to us who do not see the reaction. Neither is the battlefield so horrible, nor wounds, nor death, as we imagine.
I like man but not men.
Give me health and a day and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
Valor consist in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. True conquest is the causing of the calamity to fade and dissapear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing.
To fill the hour - that is hapiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never see anything but what we are. Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness.
Every form is the history of the thing. Every thing is a monster till we know what it is for.
Knowledge is Pain.
It is never quite so dismal weather out of doors as it appears from the house window. Neither is the hardship of campaining so dreary as it seems to us who do not see the reaction. Neither is the battlefield so horrible, nor wounds, nor death, as we imagine.
I like man but not men.
Give me health and a day and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
Valor consist in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. True conquest is the causing of the calamity to fade and dissapear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing.
To fill the hour - that is hapiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never see anything but what we are. Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness.
February 16, 2008
I was glad to start this anthology of Emerson's writings with the journal entries, the least challenging entry point. It eased me into his 19th century style of writing and thought and well-prepared me for the essays and lectures that followed, which are the real joy and benefit of Emerson's work. Emerson's view of a larger, fluid universal soul that contains all is a comforting one for this secular humanist. It contains the benefits of most religious beliefs without the problematic parts (institutional rigmarole, intolerance, sometimes bloody and immoral, sometimes merely comical, and the arrogance of Truth founded on primitive wisdom and narrative, sometimes brilliant and sometimes brutal and backward and contradictory, the sin where dogma wags the tale). Emerson's view allows awe, encourages community, provides connection, respect, responsibility, and a persuasive ethics. All of his work is rich in excerptable wisdom--aphorism, sayings, elegant phrasings crop up everywhere. There are pages where I would find myself fully adrift, lost in the esoteric atmosphere, and then suddenly brought to sharp attention by a passage of great clarity and wisdom or provocative thought. The poetry, the book's final part, is the least successful, though there is the shot heard round the world and a touching memorial to the son that died young. Taken altogether, this is the perfect introduction to this American master's life and work.
October 22, 2008
From very early on, I have had an affinity for Emerson and his at-times complex, yet remarkably simple and poignant ideas and explanations. Without question, Self-Reliance, played an integral part in my life.
This books contains some of his most powerful.
Said he, "whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage."
This books contains some of his most powerful.
Said he, "whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage."
March 30, 2010
4 months and 930pp later, I put this to bed. What's worth returning to? Essays Vols 1 & 2 (esp. Self Reliance, Experience, Friendship, Circles, Nature), the eulogy for Thoreau and that for John Brown, the American Scholar, The Div School Address, The Transcendentalist, The Lord's Supper, a handful of poems. His study of English traits is the most fun read in the collection.
The representative Representative Men and Conduct of Life essays are kinda boring. Most of the poems are not that great, especially the longer ones.
The representative Representative Men and Conduct of Life essays are kinda boring. Most of the poems are not that great, especially the longer ones.
February 7, 2009
Emerson is hard to read. I only read Nature and Self-Reliance, but both were excellent essays, and both contributed much to my view of the world. Nature is probably one of the hardest essays in the book, but it is well worth the thinking required to get through it. You will have to do some rereading, but that's just a sign of good literature. I also had a professor try to quiz me on Nature once. That's just mean, please don't do that to anyone. I love Emerson, and I hope you do, too.
March 22, 2009
Growing up in Boston served as fertile ground for connecting with great 19th century writers who lived and created in the area. I am fond of the transcendentalist movement, his great poetry, and superbly written essays. His essay on friendship should be taught to all who truly want to have friends in their lifetime. "To make ones life breathe easier is to have succeeded". A great contribution to literature and philosophy.
August 19, 2018
“Self-Reliance” contains the most prominent of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophies: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and personal inconsistencies, and to follow their own instincts and ideas. You’re to rely on your own self versus going with the ebbs and flows of culture at large. Other essays in the collection focus on friendship, history, experience, and more.
June 25, 2013
A lot of his philosophy is really beautiful (if sometimes outdatedly a bit racist/sexist), but I enjoyed the excerpts from his journals at the beginning more than any of the crafted pieces. I think he must have been a wonderful speaker.
October 19, 2017
Love the philosophy, amazed at how commonplace his ideas are now, and really enjoyed his poetry. However, I surprisingly did not care for his prose, which I found a bit obtuse and generally lacking in any flow.
July 30, 2018
These essays have always spoken to me. They make me wish I were braver.
October 26, 2008
This is my Bible--hands down.
December 23, 2008
I did my thesis on Emerson and adore his work.
Want to read
March 3, 2009so as I stumble clumsily through Whitman's Leaves of Grass, I decided to back up a bit, to one of Whitman's first encouragers=Emerson.
May 25, 2010
Honestly, I didn't like reading Emerson. I feel pressure to give this a 3 rating because of his acclaim (by others).
January 12, 2013
Thoroughly enjoyed this compilation of Emerson's notes and diary entries as he evolved into the amazing man he was, revered as one of the world's greatest thinkers in his lifetime.
August 15, 2014
read just one essay called Self Reliance but I'd be willing to read the rest of them. some texts just move you in a very positive way.:)
March 21, 2016
I really love some messages in this book but it just doesn't flow well. Something I will have to come back to in the future.
August 6, 2016
Only read two chapters of this book for uni, "American Scholar" and "Self-Reliance"; it had interesting points, but a bit difficult to understand sometimes.
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