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 »
Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible th...at a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all li...fe long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Dirty fellow!" exclaimed the Captain, seizing both her wrists, "hark you, Mrs. Frog, you'd best hold your tongue; for I must make... bold to tell you, if you don't, that I shall make no ceremony of tripping you out of the window, and there you may lie in the mud till some of your Monseers come to help you out of it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plaus...ible professions or studied actions. A man's look is the work of years; it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in our...s. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... married women work and neglect their children because the duties of the homemaker become so depreciated that women feel compel...led to take a job in order to hold the respect of the community. It is one thing if women work, as many of them must, to help support the family. It is quite another thing--it is destructive of woman's freedom--if society forces her out of the home and into the labor market in order that she may respect herself and gain the respect of others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »