Observations placeholder

Ralph Waldo Emerson – Character

I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world.... He who confronts the gods, without any misgivings, knows heaven.  There are persons he cannot choose but remember, who gave a transcendent expansion to his thoughts and kindled another life in his bosom.  There is a Greek verse which runs

'the gods are to each other not unknown'

A divine person is the prophecy of the heart, a friend is the hope of the heart.  Our beatitude waits for the fulfilment of these two in one.

When that love - which is all suffering, all abstaining, all aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch, and also a tool in this world sooner than soil its hands by any compliances, - comes into our streets and houses; only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it is to own it.