A Strong Week of Emerson

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Basic Selections from Emerson, Eduard C. Lindeman (ed.), from Apothems (excerpts from Journals: numerals are date, Emerson's age, notebook, and page):

p. 166. The greater is the man, the less are books to him. Day by day he lessens the distance between him and his authors, and soon finds very few to whom he can pay so high a compliment as to read them. (1838 - 35 - V 54)

p. 167. But now I am not sure that the educated class ever ascend to the idea of virtue; or that they desire truth: they want safety, utility, decorum. (1838 - 35 - V 81)

p. 180. All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words. (1841 - 38 - VI 132-133)

p. 182. You should never ask me what I can do. If you do not find my gift without asking, I have none for you. Would you ask a woman wherein her loveliness consists? Those to whom she is lovely will not discover it so. Such questions are but curiosity and gossip. Besides, I cannot tell you what my gift is unless you can find it without my description. (1842 - 38 - VI 186-187)

p. 184. The sons of great men should be great; if they are little, it is because they eat too much pound cake, which is an accident; or, because their fathers married dolls. (1842 - 39 - VI 267)

p. 187. I respect cats, they seem to have so much else in their heads besides their mess .... I prefer a tendency to stateliness to an excess of fellowship. (1843 - 40 - VI 439)

p. 194. When I see my friend after a long time, my first question is, Has anything become clear to you? (1847 - 43 - VII 278)

p. 196. Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed; never into the times or the public opinion, and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale — who writes always to the unknown friend. (1848 - 44 - VII 440)

p. 199. The badness of the times is making death attractive. (1850 - 46 - VIII 112)