LIFE OF EMERSON

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. He was descended from a long line of New England ministers, men of refinement and education. (Location 19)

These two discourses, Nature and The American Scholar, strike the keynote of Emerson’s philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be enumerated in twenty words—self-reliance, culture, intellectual and moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity of labor, and high ideals. (Location 51)

He was the central figure of the so-called transcendental school (Location 68)

His manner was very quiet, his smile was pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than Hawthorne did. None who met him can fail to recall that serene and kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were privileged to enjoy his companionship.” (Location 78)

Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days’ illness from pneumonia. (Location 81)

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the young mind everything is individual, stands by itself. By and by it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running underground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem. (Location 133)

But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? (Location 136)

So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim. (Location 146)

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. (Location 170)

Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. (Location 184)

We all know that as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. (Location 196)

I only would say that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. (Location 197)

Of course there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. (Location 203)

The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. (Location 216)