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TRANSCENDENTALISTS
There is never a beginning, there is never
an end, to the inexplicable continuity of
this web of God, but always circular power
returning to itself. Therein it resembles
his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending,
he never can find - so entire, so boundless.
Nature hastens to render account of herself
to the mind. Classification begins. To the
young mind every thing is individual, stands
by itself. By and by, it finds how to join
two things and see in them one nature; then
three, then three thousand; and so, it goes
on tying things together, discovering roots
running under ground whereby contrary and
remote things cohere and flower out from
one stem.
Thus to him, to this schoolboy under the
bending dome of day, is suggested that he
and it proceed from one root; one is leaf
and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring
in every vein. And what is that root? Is
not that the soul of his soul? A thought
too bold; a dream too wild.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar
lecture delivered on August 31, 1837
As I read, all seems old and familiar as
if it was my own well-worn thought; all
seems new as if it never occurred to me
before. I found myself depending on the
book and as provoked with myself for it.
How could I be so captured and enthralled;
so fascinated and bewitched? The writer
was but a man like any other; yet, on taking
up the volume again, the spell was renewed
- I felt the pure air; the old weather-beaten
motives recovered their tone. ... As I think
of this man, I have understood the devotion
of pupils who would share any fate with
their master, because his genius banished
doubt and imparted life to all things.
- Herman Grimm, commenting on Emerson's
writings
I went to the woods because I wished to
live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came
to die, discover that I had not lived. I
did not wish to live what was not life,
living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice
resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
... Our life is frittered away by detail.
Simplify, simplify.
I left the woods for as good a reason as
I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that
I had several more lives to live, and could
not spare any more time for that one. It
is remarkable how easily and insensibly
we fall into a particular route, and make
a beaten track for ourselves. I had not
lived there a week before my feet wore a
path from my door to the pond-side. The
surface of the earth is soft and impressible
by the feet of men; and so with the paths
which the mind travels. How worn and dusty,
then, must be the highways of the world,
how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
I learned this, at least, by my experiment;
that if one advances confidently in the
direction of his dreams, and endeavors to
live the life which he has imagined, he
will meet with a success unexpected in common
hours.
In proportion as he simplifies his life,
the laws of the universe will appear less
complex, and solitude will not be solitude,
nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
If you have built castles in the air, your
work need not be lost; that is where they
should be. Now put the foundations under
them.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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