in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson quoted Wordsworth: “Christ died on the tree; that built Dunscore kirk yonder; that brought you and me together. Time has only a relative existence.” - pp. 476
Classics which at home are drowsily read, have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. I remember that some of the happiest and most valuable hours I have owed to books, passed, many years ago, on shipboard. - pp. 483
As we neared the land, its genius was felt. This was inevitably the British side. In every man's thought arises now a new system, English sentiments, English loves and fears, English history and social modes. Yesterday, every passenger had measured the speed of the ship by watching the bubbles over teh ship's bulwarks. To-day, instead of bubbles, we measure by Kinsale, Cork, Waterford and Ardmore. There lay the green shore of Ireland, like some coast of plenty. We could see towns, towers, churches, harvests, but the curse of eight hundred years we could not discern. - pp. 483
Alfieri thought Italy and England the ony countries worth living in: the former because there Nature vindicates her rights and triumphs over the evils inflicted by the governments; the latter because art conquers anture and tarnsforms a rude, ungenial land into a paradise of comformt and plenty. - pp. 484
The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, lawers, opinion, religion take, is the natural genius of the British mind. The influence of France is a constituent of modern civility, but not enough opposed to the English for the most wholesome effect. The American is ony the continuation of the English genius into new conditions, more or less propitious. - pp. 485
Many a mean, dastardly boy is , at the age of puberty, transformed into a serious and generous youth. - pp. 498
No comments:
Post a Comment