Emerson was the greater artist. His essays contain some of the most beautiful language in our literature. How Henry James could ha...ve thought he had never developed a "style" is to me one of the mysteries of criticism. Thoreau in Walden comes close to the master, but he falls behind in the homeliness of his details and in the occasional smugness of his social satire. It almost seems as if he were reacting against the chiseled beauty of Emerson's prose. The latter's sentences were so fine that he needed nothing else. They became, like marble statues, part of the garden that was Concord. Their composer, serene, calm, detached, bland in speech and manner, the soft-spoken philosopher revered by all, did not often trouble himself on his strolls in the woods and along the river to pluck the flowers or feed squirrels or even identify the different species of flora and fauna. As Thoreau observed, he wouldn't have been willing to trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets of Concord because it would have seemed out of character. Emerson communed with nature on a spiritual level, using his eyes to take in the landscape and his lungs the fresh air. He had no needs to brace himself with cold or rain or spend the night under the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of al...l the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Emperor Joseph II: Your work is ingenious. It's quality work, and there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and ...it will be perfect. Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, majesty?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Miss Mary Emerson is here,--the youngest person in Concord, though about eighty,--and the most apprehensive of a genuine thought; ...earnest to know of your inner life; most stimulating society; and exceedly witty withal. She says they called her old when she was young, and she has never grown any older. I wish you could see her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have made slight acquaintance also with one Mrs. Lidia Emerson, who almost persuades me to be a Christian, but I fear I as often... lapse into heathenism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me.... I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free a...s under the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it,--I who have failed to render even those slight services of the hand which would have been for a sign at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived ...together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »