Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, First and Second Series, 1 Vol

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction, Classics, 19th Century, Ebooks, Literature

612 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1844

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.

The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly I have changed since high school; as well as the world around me. These essays now seem much deeper and more insightful than they did the first time around. Emerson is not an easy read but he made me think differently about the world around me than I did before reading him. About myself as well. What a great gift that is!

[Usha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emerson teaches me something new every time I read him.

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a suspicion that one's views on Emerson depend very much on whether one feels they are living up to his statutes or not.

Emerson is all about doing things your own way, being your best self, not giving in to excuses. Many of us, including myself, find that a bitter pill to swallow; or depending on the day, words of encouragement; or, axioms in which we are in total agreement.

I always found his words uplifting, encouraging. Do I live up to his standards? Does anyone? There is still something to be said for having standards though. Sometimes I feel in this "post-empire" time we live in that standards themselves are thought of as passé outdated entities. That earnestness and sacrifice are just boring useless rules our grandparents tried to instill, that never worked except to turn our parents into total cunts. Well, you know what, IRONY IS A DEAD SCENE, cynicism is fucking boring, and if you think values have no place in reality, that they are just tired aesthetic concepts and it's much cooler and funnier to watch Eastbound & Down, then YOU ARE A CUNT.

I'm real bitter today. Wonder what Waldo would say about that... prolly that it is a sign of weakness...

[Ira Therebel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every once in a while we stumble upon a book which we are almost ashamed of not liking. This is the case for me.

I just did not like it. I was basically forcing myself to read every essay without skipping. It was so tedious and I just really didn't care what he has to say. There were a few quotes that I thought were beautiful, but those were maybe 2-3 in the whole book. Other than that I found it very hard to read and I really didn't care for his ideas and thoughts on those topics. Not even his famous Self Reliance.

I am not saying that he wasn't an intelligent man and that his essays aren't indeed a masterpiece for many. But I just am not one of them. I do have this sort of love-hate feelings to many philosophy works. I am interested and yet when I read it I have no idea why I did it. It sure isn't for everyone.

[Annie Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read a few of these out loud to my dad this afternoon (Experience, Self-Reliance, Compensation), and a few quietly to myself in the evening time (Love, Friendship, Prudence, Circles, History). These essays are real sites of return. “I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into true nature.”

[Bruce · Rating 1 out of 5]

When the first series of these essays were first published in 1841 the author’s aunt Mary remarked that it was “a strange medly [sic] of atheism and false independence.” Other reviewers were more favorable and the two series went on to become best sellers on both sides of the Atlantic. I think Aunt Mary’s charge of atheism is a bit misleading, since Emerson believed in The Over-Soul, of which all individual souls participated. I expect today’s generic term would be Higher Power. However, I must agree with Aunt Mary about the strange mix of subjects, which I found tedious meanderings characterize by rhetorical flourish with little or no substance behind it. It was a real chore to finish this book for me—although it was an excellent sleep aide. The clearest of the essays was “Self-Reliance,” Aunt Mary’s “false independence,” this paean to non-conformity and individualism seemed to me, a life-lone non-conformist, a reductio ad absurdum of the point its author is attempting to assert. The essay contains this famous gem of logic: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”

I continue to admire Emerson as a man and for what he did for American Literature, but this is one of the worst books I've ever read.

[Tim]

I've read Self-Reliance, The American Scholar, The Divinity School Address and part of Nature. I'm somewhat ashamed that I'm reading them for the first time here at the age of forty. Yet, I don't know how much of it I would have appreciated at a younger age. In my literature class, I find the youth sadly apathetic despite the pop trend towards involvement. Perhaps weighty discussions at 8:00 am are a bit overwhelming for their drug and alcohol saturated minds.

[Paul Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book certainly has moments of great insight. Emerson's passion is quite clear and often well-articulated. But this is a very lengthy book, and many of the essays no longer have as much to offer as they perhaps once did. There are several that are invaluable, of course, but many of them have simply become too obtuse and arcane to be really relevant anymore. I read the book all the way through, but my recommendation would be that people purchase it simply for reference, and maybe to read the more famous essays now and again.

In the end, many of the essays have disturbing undercurrents of racism or anti-democratic sentiment and Emerson's inability to see nature as a dark force, as it can sometimes be, sinks large portions of the book. We must bear in mind that Emerson was writing in a different time and that his comments that are now unacceptable were not always that way. Clearly this book is historically important, and it is obviously a worthwhile one to have sitting on the shelf to quote or occasionally reference, but it is certainly not the bulletproof guide to living that many have made it out to be.

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The world globes itself in a drop of dew."

Reading Emerson is like watching the globe of the world in a dewdrop. And, even his prose carries much of the gossamer quality of poetry. This collection contains his collected essays and will please both the avid lover of poetry and those who enjoy expostion or nonfiction. Emerson shares many of his personal opinions on such ideas as 'imitation is suicide' and he warns against 'worship of the past.' Many of his essays bear the mark of platitudes and proverbs. All in all, it makes for thoughtful reading; though you won't agree with everything he says regardless of your political or religious beliefs.

While speaking ardently for abolition of slavery much of his life, he was against many methods of help for the poor. That is just a brief sample of what you will find here. The work is available on Kindle reasonably priced. I am including a few quotes to give you more of an idea of what to expect from this substantial work. Interestingly, Emerson lived almost 80 years, and began to lose his memory from about two years after the abolition of slavery in the United States. He had a long interesting life.

"A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. His faculties refer to natures out of him and predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of a fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a world."

"...the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought."

"Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat."

"Nature hates monopolies and exceptions... There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others."

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not."

[Johnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent style; insightful to the point of introducing unnoticed sources of disquietude and joy. I filled pages copying quotes. This definitely belongs in the category of literature that one does not just read but live with and live out.

[Michael Baranowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Emerson frustrates me. He writes beautifully, is often quite wise, but has a style that is, to me disjointed to the point where I often find him difficult to follow. It's as if he's brilliant at aphorisms but not nearly so good at constructing an extended argument.

[Bob Couchenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are an American, and have stepped outside the puritanical bubble, you will probably get something out of this.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a couple years to finally finish this book of essays by "America's most famous philosopher." I wish I could say that I'd read an essay between novels as a transition or filler, but the truth is that I just plugged away at it as infrequently as I could get away with. I mean, the only person I had to answer to was myself.
This just wasn't any fun. Reading it made me feel like I wasn't smart. The language was laborious to get through, like reading Shakespeare. Shakespeare began to make sense to me when I saw it performed. Suddenly, I was laughing out loud. (So...it actually IS a comedy!) I never got to a point in this book where it flowed and made sense. Every once in while there might be a paragraph, or more likely, a single sentence, which touched some place in me that allowed understanding. I could appreciate the insight. And then I read another paragraph or sentence, and was lost again. Given, these essays were written about 150 years ago, and reference people and events which may have been contemporary at that time, but have long since lost their significance. The language itself is weighty, with lots of "whither" and "whence" and phrasing that is ponderous. I kept wondering: what is your point?
I am assuming that there are some marvelous, eternal pieces of wisdom among these pages. I only wish I could have discovered them in a more succinct work.

[Aria Izik-Dzurko · Rating 3 out of 5]

He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense and poetry and annals are alike. The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether, the solid angularity of facts. No anchor no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact…
Who cares what the fact was when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign?… what is history but a fable agreed a upon?

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was going to write a review about how Emerson said I’m nothing without self expression but I thought it was too headass and I’m suppressing my self expression and letting Emerson down sorry buddy but right now I’m yelling into the void for people to read so I’m also expressing myself hmmmm bet ya didn’t think of that one Ralph

[Courtney Mccarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Find myself having a hard time focusing

[Sarah]

Some interesting insights. Not really the kind of book you give a rating for.

[Annie Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My centireader, especially Character. It’s like pixie dust.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took a lot of time to read it (nearly forty years ago I was gifted the little green book) and I know that it is one of the “great books.”

Yes, every now and then I found gems nestled in the pages, like this sentence. “Sleep lingers all our lifetimes about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.” The essay on gifts did resonate with me. “The only gift is a portion of thyself. . . Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.”

But, by and large, I am relieved to check this one off as read and reshelve it. When descriptions of Ralph Waldo Emerson alert you to the fact that his theology was his own, pay attention and don’t assume that just because he lived a long time ago and wrote and spoke as a prominent intellectual that he had the market on wisdom.

[Herb Hastings · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to walk around in the mind of a remarkably thoughtful man, you should spend some time with these essays. I bought this book when I was an impressionable junior in high school over 50 years ago. From my underlinings I must have found much to make me think or a fresh way to look at many things. The topics covered include: History; self reliance; heroism; manners; friendship; compensation; love; and manners. As my father used to describe certain people: " He sure had a lot to say".
My favorite quote : " A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen philosophers and divines."

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

Self-Reliance, one of Emerson's twenty-one essays in this collection, came recommended from Sven Birkerts last fall in his own anthology.

We all read Emerson in school. I remember reading this essay then. But today the ponderous writing obscures the fine points that he makes. I will come back to this book at a quieter time for my own pondering.

This is a fine anthology with good introduction, notes and chronology. Looking forward to returning sometime down the calendar.

[Lukas Sotola · Rating 5 out of 5]

In these essays, Emerson takes such simple concepts--friendship, love, circles, experience--and picks them apart and examines them from every angle in some of the most gorgeous prose I've ever read. Through that process, he demonstrates the mystery of our everyday lives, and why everyday life is worth praising.

[Kevin Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Returning to these essays deep in middle-age, I appreciate them that much more. Emerson's style (as Douglas Crase notes in his introduction) had a powerful and indelible influence on all of American literature that has followed. The writing style is, indeed, incredibly seductive but it is the actual-no-nonsense wisdom that makes me turn the pages back and begin reading again and again.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found inspiration and comfort in Emerson's praise of non-conformity and truth seeking.

"Nothing is at last as sacred as the integrity of your own mind." (From self-reliance)

Only read portions of these essays.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a brave, brave book...Emerson never fails to raise my thoughts to the highest of ideas. His passion is infectious. Mandatory reading for all Americans.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who so would be a man, must be a non-conformist. "Self Reliance", oh yeah.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading if you want to understand American history, religion, culture and art.

[Stacey]

Read in college

[Aldine Lockett]

Great writing.

[Chrisanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

At this point I know two things.
Emerson is a genius.
And I'm not, because my head hurts.