Ralph Waldo Emerson citations

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La Destinée de la République (Fortune of the Republic), 1878

Solitude et Société ('), 1870

1860s, Life and Letters in New England (1867)
Contexte: There are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the Future: the Establishment and the Movement. At times the resistance is reanimated, the schism runs under the world and appears in Literature, Philosophy, Church, State and social customs.

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Contexte: In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt it, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

8 September 1833. As quoted in: Maurice York and Rick Spaulding (2008): Ralph Waldo Emerson – The the Infinitude of the Private Man: A Biography. https://books.google.de/books?id=_pRMlDQavQwC&pg=PA240&dq=A+man+contains+all+that+is+needful+to+his+government+within+himself&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiahO73qqfeAhUwpIsKHRqzDswQ6AEIQDAD#v=onepage&q=A%20man%20contains%20all%20that%20is%20needful%20to%20his%20government%20within%20himself&f=false Chicago and Raleigh: Wrighwood Press, pages 240 – 241. Derived from: Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (1909): Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with annotations, III, pages 200-201.
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
Contexte: A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befal [sic] him must be from himself. He only can do himself any good or any harm. Nothing can be given to him or can taken from him but always there is a compensation.. There is a correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the world; more properly, everything that is known to man. Instead of studying things without the principles of them, all may be penetrated unto with him. Every act puts the agent in a new position. The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation

A lecture on 'Books' delivered in 1864; the quoted phrase 'glittering generalities' had been used by Rufus Choate to describe the declaration of the rights of man in the Preamble to the Constitution (The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1903-4) Vol. 10, p. 88, note 1)

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Contexte: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. 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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

1840s, The Conservative (1841)
Contexte: The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times. The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man’s bosom with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.
Such an irreconcilable antagonism of course must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. It is the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature.

1836
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

As quoted in Think, Vol. 4-5 (1938), p. 32

Source: 1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Contexte: Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

May 1849: This is a remark Emerson wrote referring to the unreliability of second hand testimony and worse upon the subject of immortality. It is often taken out of proper context, and has even begun appearing on the internet as "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know" or sometimes just "I hate quotations".
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
Source: The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
Variante: Nature and books belong to all who see them.

Domestic Life
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

Letters and Social Aims, Social Aims
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Source: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Self Reliance

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
Contexte: 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.

Source: Self-Reliance