Liam’s Reviews > Oberman: Lettres publiées par M. Senancour - Tome I > Status Update

“A single jonquil was in bloom. It is the strongest expression of desire, and it was the first fragrance of the year. I caught a glimpse of all the happiness meant for man. That indescribable harmony of creation, the vision of the ideal world, was rounded to completeness within me; I have never felt anything so sudden and inspiring.”

In a fold of the Jura,wears an aspect of grandeur and simplicity,it is wild and yet cheerful,it is at once peaceful and romantic…The earth
seems there less dominated by man,and man less enslaved to pitiful conventionalities.The eye is not
everlastingly confronted with…counterfeit wealth
of so many unhappy regions.But alas! there were
big villages, stone houses, aristocracy, affectation,
vanity, smartness, irony.

How the soul expands when it comes face to face with what is
beautiful and unforeseen. In what concerns the soul I do not like to have things cut and dried beforehand. Let the understanding pursue its end methodically and reduce to system its achievements. But the heart, it toils not; and if you ask it to produce, it will produce nothing; cultivation makes it barren