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Quotations and Fragments from Emerson's Essay "Fate"
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| "Let us honestly state the facts." - Emerson |
Contents
Supporting "well medleys" are presupposed
throughout:Fate
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| R. W. Emerson |
A good deal of our politics is physiological.
A strong, astringent, bilious nature . . . has curculios, borers, knife-worms: a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
All conservatives are such from personal defects . . . They . . . can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
America has a bad name for superficialness.
Beatitude . . . is not in us so much as we are in it.
Calvinists . . . felt that the weight of the Universe held them down to their place. What could they do?
Consider two things: power and circumstance. . . . The Circumstance is Nature.
Delicate omens . . . undeceiving things . . . Him to beckon, him to warn.
Events are the children of his body and mind.
Events expand with the character.
The fact is invariable with the Neapolitan, that, when mature, he assumes the forms of
the unmistakable scoundrel. That is a little overstated, - but may pass.
Every brave youth is in training to ride and rule [a certain] dragon.
Every spirit makes its house; but afterwards the house confines the spirit.
Every zone has its own Fauna.
Fate has its lord . . . the Universe.
Ferocity in the interiors of nature. Let us not deny it.
He who sees through the design, presides over it.
If Fate is ore and quarry, if evil is good in the making . . . and weights are wings and means, - we are reconciled.
If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good.
Insight . . . Where it shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things make a musical or pictorial impression.
It is wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the other way: the practical view is the other.
Let us honestly state the facts.
Most men and most women are merely one couple more.
Nature . . . [sometimes] passes understanding.
Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes.
No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it.
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are.
Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, periodicity, and presage: they meet the person they seek; what their companion prepares to say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs apprise them of what is about to befall.
The central intention of Nature [is] harmony and joy.
The desire that [truth] shall prevail . . . That affection is essential to will.
The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your skin.
The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense: "Whatever is fated, that will take place. The great immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed."
The hero . . . The glance of his eye has the force of sunbeams.
The new talent draws off so rapidly the vital force.
The planet makes itself.
The question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live?
The web of relation is shown in habitat.
The world . . . will not mind drowning a man or a woman.
There are more belongings to every creature than his air and his food. His instincts must be met.
There is adjustment between the animal and its food . . . Balances are kept.
There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to admire a garden.
They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane.
Thought [may carry] the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic.*
We learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us.
We must begin our reform earlier still . . . What to do? By obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding on each string, we learn at last its power.
We must not run into generalizations too large.
What happens once, may happen again.
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Adjoined
Em: Atkinson, Brooks, ed: Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Modern Library. New York, 1950.Rwe: Porte, Joel and Saundra Morris, eds: The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge UP. Cambridge, 1999.
Talw: Rusk, Ralph: The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Columbia University. New York, 1949.
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