The Mind of Emerson

After writing about Journaling and quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson’s description of a journal a few days ago, I decided to read again Bliss Perry’s book, “The Heart of Emerson’s Journals.”  I’ve read it many times before.  When I read a book I normally jot down the date it was read and underline those passages that speak to me.  

As a college student I became quite taken by Emerson.  I even wrote a paper for one of my literature classes entitled “Emerson and The Over Soul.”   His Essays on Nature and his Poems spoke to me then—and speak to me still.

Perhaps some of the Journal gems from Emerson’s pen will speak to you this morning.

“What is the hardest task in the world?  To think….”

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

“Lidian says that the only sin which people never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion.”

“I believe the Christian religion to be profoundly true; true to an extent that they who are styled its most orthodox defenders have never, or but in rarest glimpses, once or twice in a lifetime, reached.”

Bryce Canyon--2016--Nature's Wonder

“If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future.  His well being is always ahead.  Such a creature is probably immortal.”

“We are always getting ready to live, but never living.  We have many years of …education; then many years of earning a livelihood, and we get sick, and take journeys for our health, and compass land and sea for improvement by traveling, but the work of self-improvement, —always under our nose,—nearer than the nearest, is seldom seldom engaged in.”