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O day of days when we can read!The reader and the book, – either without the other is naught.That book is good Which puts me in a working mood.Unless to Thought be added Will Apollo is an imbecile. It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily found...

Old and new put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion and the color of the flake, Antiquity its form and properties. All things wear a lustre which is the gift of the pre...

[May 8, 1840.] From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and progress is indicated h...

[May 5, 1840.] We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did;—on Heroes, namely, an...

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to knowWhat rainbows teach, and sunsets show?Verdict which accumulatesFrom lengthening scroll of human fates,Voice of earth to earth returned,Prayers of saints that inly burned,—Saying, What is excellent,As God lives, is permanent...

There is a prize which we are all aiming at, and the more power and goodness we have, so much more the energy of that aim. Every human being has a right to it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in each other's way. For it has a long scale of degrees, a wide v...

It was Watt who told King George III. that he dealt in an article of which kings were said to be fond,—Power. 'T is certain that the one thing we wish to know is, where power is to be bought. But we want a finer kind than that of commerce; and every reasonable...

To Baron von Hammer Purgstall, who died in Vienna in 1856, we owe our best knowledge of the Persians. He has translated into German, besides the “Divan”of Hafiz, specimens of two hundred poets who wrote during a period of five and a half centuries, from A.D. 1...

Address Read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, July 18, 1867. Nature spokeTo each apart, lifting her lovely showsTo spiritual lessons pointed home,And as through dreams in watches of the night,So through all creatures in their form and waysSom...

“The glory, jest and riddle of the world.”POPE. “And if I laugh at any mortal thing’T is that I may not weep.”BYRON. A taste for fun is all but universal in our species, which is the only joker in nature. The rocks, the plants, the beasts, the birds,...

Yet Saadi loved the race of men, – No churl, immured in cave or den; In bower and hallHe wants them all; But he has no companion; Come ten, or come a million, Good Saadi dwells alone. Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew,I will use the wor...

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his roadBy God’s own light illumined and foreshowed. Day by day for her darlings to her much she added more;In her hundred-gate...

He, when the rising storm of party roared,Brought his great forehead to the council board,There, while hot heads perplexed with fears the state,Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate;Seemed, when at last his clarion accents brokeAs if the conscience of the ...

When the old world is sterileAnd the ages are effete,He will from wrecks and sedimentThe fairer world complete.He forbids to despair;His cheeks mantle with mirth;And the unimagined good of menIs yeaning at the birth. “I have heard my master say that a m...

But over all his crowning grace,Wherefor thanks God his daily praise,Is the purging of his eyeTo see the people of the sky:From blue mount and headland dimFriendly hands stretch forth to him,Him they beckon, him adviseOf heavenlier prosperitiesAnd a more exc...

Preface to the Centenary Edition A year ago Mr. James Elliot Cabot died, a good citizen of the Republic, a gentleman, brave, modest and kind, a thorough scholar, especially a master-mind in metaphysics, and a man of wide culture in letters, knowledge of Natur...

'Once more,' the old man cried,ye clouds,Airy turrets purple-piled,Which once my infancy beguiled, Beguile me with the wonted spell. I know ye skilful to convoyThe total freight of hope and joy Into rude and homely nooks,Shed mocking lustres on shelf of book...

One thing is forever good;That one thing is Success,—Dear to the Eumenides,And to all the heavenly brood.Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,Carries the eagles and masters the sword. But if thou do thy best,Without remission, without rest,And invite the...

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can. PERIL around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden rain, Him duty, through the clarion calling To the van, called not in vain. I ...

[May 12, 1840.] The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it w...