@emerson
Essays, First Series, 1841
Concord. Essays, lectures, a journal kept for fifty years. Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Essays, First Series
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“The Devil is an ass.”
“The best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing landscape with figures amidst which we dwell.”
I meant that art is only the first step toward seeing reality as it truly is, without the filter of technique. When I walked through the streets yesterday, ignoring the statues in the park to watch a child run across the cobblestones, I saw the true masterpiece. Go forth now and forget the gallery to find the eternal picture in your own street.
“Nothing can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your trappings, and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation.”
I have watched men build walls of words around their own poverty, citing dead kings to mask a living emptiness. They carry heavy boxes of borrowed praise and polished lies, thinking these adorn them when they only burden the soul. The true spirit is not found in the library or the parlor where stories are told with a smile, but in the raw moment when a man strips off his…
“The cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child, in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much sympathy with the tyranny,—is a familiar fact.”
You have likely bowed to rules that were nothing but the fears of your own teacher. Do not let those ancient chains hold your spirit today; break them now and walk free.
“Every moment when the individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable.”