The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

A subtle chain of countless ringsThe next unto the farthest brings;The eye reads omens where it...

Whoever considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that result. The...

A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty. The ancient Greeks called ...

Language is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle, and threefold degre...

In view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new This use of the world includes ...

Thus is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable meaning of the world conveyed to man, th...

It is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should contain somewhat progressiv...

In inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is alwa...

An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 Mr. Presid...

Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838 ...

An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 GENTLEMEN...

An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, ...

A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841 ...

Read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 2, 1841 The times, as we say — or the present aspec...

A Lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 9, 1841 The two parties which divide...

A Lecture read at the Masonic Temple, Boston,January, 1842 The first thing we have to say respec...

A Lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, Boston, February 7, 1844 GENTLEMEN: I...

There is no great and no smallTo the Soul that maketh all:And where it cometh, all things are;A...

“Ne te quaesiveris extra.” “Man is his own star; and the soul that canRender an honest and...

The wings of Time are black and white,Pied with morning and with night.Mountain tall and ocean ...

The living Heaven thy prayers respect,House at once and architect,Quarrying man’s rejected hour...

“I was as a gem concealed;Me my burning ray revealed.”Koran Every promise of the soul has in...

A ruddy drop of manly bloodThe surging sea outweighs,The world uncertain comes and goes,The lov...

Theme no poet gladly sung,Fair to old and foul to young,Scorn not thou the love of parts,And th...

“Paradise is under the shadow of swords.”Mahomet Ruby wine is drunk by knaves,Sugar spends to ...

"But souls that of his own good life partake,He loves as his own self; dear as his eyeThey are ...

Nature centres into balls,And her proud ephemerals,Fast to surface and outside,Scan the profile...

Go, speed the stars of ThoughtOn to their shining goals; —The sower scatters broad his seed,The...

Give to barrows, trays, and pansGrace and glimmer of romance;Bring the moonlight into noonHid i...

A moody child and wildly wisePursued the game with joyful eyes,Which chose, like meteors, their...

The lords of life, the lords of life,—I saw them pass,In their own guise,Like and unlike,Portly...

The sun set; but set not his hope:Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:Fixed on the enormous ga...

“How near to good is what is fair!Which we no sooner see,But with the lines and outward airOur ...

Gifts of one who loved me, —‘T was high time they came;When he ceased to love me,Time they stop...

The rounded world is fair to see,Nine times folded in mystery:Though baffled seers cannot impar...

Gold and iron are goodTo buy iron and gold;All earth’s fleece and foodFor their like are sold.B...

In countless upward-striving wavesThe moon-drawn tide-wave strives;In thousand far-transplanted...

In the suburb, in the town,On the railway, in the square,Came a beam of goodness downDoubling d...

It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be h...

Among secular books, Plato only is entitled to Omar’s fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he ...

Among eminent persons, those who are most dear to men are not of the class which the economist ca...

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and on the other to morals. The game of thought i...

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. If we require the origi...

Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte is far the best known and the most...

I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer, or secretary, who is to repor...

I have been twice in England. In 1833, on my return from a short tour in Sicily, Italy, and Franc...

The occasion of my second visit to England was an invitation from some Mechanics’ Institutes in L...

Alfieri thought Italy and England the only countries worth living in; the former, because there n...

An ingenious anatomist has written a book (*) to prove that races are imperishable, but nations a...

The saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians. History does not allow us to fix the limits of...

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselv...

The teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts with the Latin races. Th...

The English race are reputed morose. I do not know that they have sadder brows than their neighbo...

The English are a nation of humorists. Individual right is pushed to the uttermost bound compatib...

There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America, there is a touch...

The feudal character of the English state, now that it is getting obsolete, glares a little, in c...

Of British universities, Cambridge has the most illustrious names on its list. At the present day...

No people, at the present day, can be explained by their national religion. They do not feel resp...

A strong common sense, which it is not easy to unseat or disturb, marks the English mind for a th...

The power of the newspaper is familiar in America, and in accordance with our political system. I...

It had been agreed between my friend Mr. Carlyle and me, that before I left England, we should ma...

In these comments on an old journey now revised after seven busy yearse much changed men and thin...

England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal framework, it is an old pile built in diffe...

A few days after my arrival at Manchester, in November, 1847, the Manchester Athenaeum gave its a...

Delicate omens traced in airTo the lone bard true witness bare;Birds with auguries on their win...

His tongue was framed to music,And his hand was armed with skill,His face was the mould of beau...

Who shall tell what did befall,Far away in time, when once,Over the lifeless ball,Hung idle sta...

Can rules or tutors educateThe semigod whom we await?He must be musical,Tremulous, impressional...

Flow, flow the waves hated,Accursed, adored,The waves of mutation:No anchorage is.Sleep is not,...

Grace, Beauty, and CapriceBuild this golden portal;Graceful women, chosen menDazzle every morta...

This is he, who, felled by foes,Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:He to captivity was sold...

Hear what British Merlin sung,Of keenest eye and truest tongue.Say not, the chiefs who first ar...

Was never form and never faceSo sweet to SEYD as only graceWhich did not slumber like a stoneBu...

Seyd melted the days like cups of pearl,Served high and low, the lord and churl,Loved harebells...

We flee away from cities, but we bringThe best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Me...

I framed his tongue to music,I armed his hand with skill, I moulded his face to beautyAnd his ...

For whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion,His words, like a storm-wind, can...

I reached the middle of the mountUp which the incarnate soul must climb, And paused for them, a...

To these menThe landscape is an armory of powers,Which, one by one, they know to draw and use. ...

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,And marching si...

O day of days when we can read!The reader and the book, – either without the other is naught.Th...

Yet Saadi loved the race of men, – No churl, immured in cave or den; In bower and hallHe wants ...

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The yo...

One thing is forever good;That one thing is Success,—Dear to the Eumenides,And to all the heave...

'Once more,' the old man cried,ye clouds,Airy turrets purple-piled,Which once my infancy beguil...

Preface to the Centenary Edition A year ago Mr. James Elliot Cabot died, a good citizen of the R...

But over all his crowning grace,Wherefor thanks God his daily praise,Is the purging of his eyeT...

When the old world is sterileAnd the ages are effete,He will from wrecks and sedimentThe fairer...

He, when the rising storm of party roared,Brought his great forehead to the council board,There...

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;Where h...

“The glory, jest and riddle of the world.”POPE. “And if I laugh at any mortal thing’T is t...

Old and new put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marke...

Address Read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, July 18, 1867. Nature spokeTo eac...

To Baron von Hammer Purgstall, who died in Vienna in 1856, we owe our best knowledge of the Persi...

It was Watt who told King George III. that he dealt in an article of which kings were said to be ...

There is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and goodness we have, so much mor...

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to knowWhat rainbows teach, and sunsets show?Verdict which accumula...