Quote of the Day

It takes a Goethe to see a work of art fully, completely and perfectly, and I thoroughly agree with Mr. Whibley when he says that it is a pity that Goethe never had an opportunity of reading Dorian Gray. I feel quite certain that he would have been delighted by it, and I only hope that some ghostly publisher is even now distributing shadowy copies in the Elysian fields, and that the cover of Gautier's copy is powdered with gilt asphodels. You may ask me, Sir, why I should care to have the ethical beauty of my story recognised. I answer, Simply because it exists, because the thing is there. The chief merit of Madame Bovary is not the moral lesson that can be found in it, any more than the chief merit of Salammbo is its archaeology; but Flaubert was perfectly right in exposing the ignorance of those who called the one immoral and the other inaccurate; and not merely was he right in the ordinary sense of the word, but he was artistically right, which is everything. The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic. Allow me to make one more correction, Sir, and I will have done with Mr. Whibley. He ends his letter with the statement that I have been indefatigable in my public appreciation of my own work. I have no doubt that in saying this he means to pay me a compliment, but he really overrates my capacity, as well as my inclination for work. I must frankly confess that, by nature and by choice, I am extremely indolent. Cultivated idleness seems to me to be the proper occupation for man. I dislike newspaper controversies of any kind, and of the two hundred and sixteen criticisms of Dorian Gray that have passed from my library table into the wastepaper basket I have taken public notice of only three. One was that which appeared in the Scots Observer. I noticed it because it made a suggestion, about the intention of the author in writing the book, which needed correction. The second was an article in the St. James's Gazette. It was offensively and vulgarly written, and seemed to me to require immediate and caustic censure.

It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.

Ezra Ripley, who sat in the pulpit that day, was eighty-four years old, and when, six years later, he died, he had been pastor of the Concord church for sixty-three years. [102] _Page 83, note 2._ Lemuel Shattuck, author of the excellent _History of Concord_, which was published before the end of the year. [103] _Page 85, note 1._ In Mr. Emerson’s lecturing excursions during the following thirty-five years, he found with pleasure and pride the sons of his Concord neighbors important men in the building up the prairie and river towns, or the making and operating the great highways of emigration and trade. LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN April 19, 1838, Mr. Emerson made this entry in his Journal:— “This disaster of the Cherokees, brought to me by a sad friend to blacken my days and nights! I can do nothing; why shriek? why strike ineffectual blows? I stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move, and if I do not, why, it is left undone. The amount of it, to be sure, is merely a scream; but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.... “Yesterday wrote the letter to Van Buren,—a letter hated of me, a deliverance that does not deliver the soul. I write my journal, I read my lecture with joy; but this stirring in the philanthropic mud gives me no peace. I will let the republic alone until the republic comes to me. I fully sympathize, be sure, with the sentiments I write; but I accept it rather from my friends than dictate it. It is not my impulse to say it, and therefore my genius deserts me; no muse befriends; no music of thought or word accompanies.” Yet his conscience then, and many a time later, brought him to do the brave, distasteful duty. ADDRESS ON EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES The tenth anniversary of the emancipation by Act of Parliament of all slaves in the insular possessions of Great Britain in the West Indies was celebrated in Concord, in the year 1844, by citizens of thirteen Massachusetts towns, and they invited Mr. Emerson to make the Address. The Rev. Dr. Channing, on whose mind the wrongs of the slave had weighed ever since he had seen them in Santa Cruz, had spoken on Slavery in Faneuil Hall in 1837, had written on the subject, and his last public work had been a speech on the anniversary of the West Indian Emancipation in 1842, in the village of Lenox.

_If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting Time must be, as Poor Richard_ says, _the_ _greatest Prodigality_; since, as he elsewhere tells us, _Lost Time is never found again; and what we call Time enough, always proves little enough_: Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the Purpose; so by Diligence shall we do more with less Perplexity. _Sloth makes all Things difficult, but Industry all easy_, as _Poor Richard_ says; and _He that riseth late must trot all Day, and shall scarce overtake his Business at Night; while Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him_, as we read in _Poor Richard_, who adds, _Drive thy Business, let not that drive thee_; and _Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise._ _Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon Hope will die fasting._ _There are no Gains without Pains._ _He that hath a Trade hath an Estate; and he that hath a Calling, hath an Office of Profit and Honor_; but then the _Trade_ must be worked at, and the _Calling_ well followed, or neither the _Estate_ nor the _Office_ will enable us to pay our Taxes. What though you have found no Treasure, nor has any rich Relation left you a Legacy, _Diligence is the Mother of Good-luck_, as _Poor Richard_ says, _and God gives all Things to Industry_. _One To-day is worth two To-morrows_, and farther, _Have you somewhat to do To-morrow, do it To-day_. If you were a Servant, would you not be ashamed that a good Master should catch you idle? Are you then your own Master, _be ashamed to catch yourself idle_. Stick to it steadily; and you will see great Effects, for _Constant Dropping wears away Stones_, and by _Diligence and Patience the Mouse ate in two the Cable_; and _Little Strokes fell great Oaks_. Methinks I hear some of you say, _Must a Man afford himself no Leisure_? I will tell thee, my friend, what _Poor Richard_ says, _Employ thy Time well, if thou meanest to gain Leisure; and, since thou art not sure of a Minute, throw not away an Hour_. Leisure, is Time for doing something useful; this Leisure the diligent Man will obtain, but the lazy Man never; so that, as _Poor Richard_ says, _A Life of Leisure and a Life of Laziness are two things_. _Keep thy Shop, and thy Shop will keep thee_; and again, _If you would have your business done, go; if not, send.

They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four perfectly; and therefore, without saying any thing of _our_ carriage, we should be able to explore the different beauties extremely well. They would hardly come in their chaise, I think, at that season of the year. Indeed, when the time draws on, I shall decidedly recommend their bringing the barouche-landau; it will be so very much preferable. When people come into a beautiful country of this sort, you know, Miss Woodhouse, one naturally wishes them to see as much as possible; and Mr. Suckling is extremely fond of exploring. We explored to King’s-Weston twice last summer, in that way, most delightfully, just after their first having the barouche-landau. You have many parties of that kind here, I suppose, Miss Woodhouse, every summer?” “No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home than engage in schemes of pleasure.” “Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol, ‘I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will, would never stir beyond the park paling.’ Many a time has she said so; and yet I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary, when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little. I perfectly understand your situation, however, Miss Woodhouse—(looking towards Mr. Woodhouse), Your father’s state of health must be a great drawback. Why does not he try Bath?—Indeed he should. Let me recommend Bath to you. I assure you I have no doubt of its doing Mr.

For he had a turn for mechanics; had invented a plough in his district, had ordered wheel-barrows from England, but the coolies wouldn’t use them, all of which Clarissa knew nothing whatever about. The way she said “Here is my Elizabeth!”--that annoyed him. Why not “Here’s Elizabeth” simply? It was insincere. And Elizabeth didn’t like it either. (Still the last tremors of the great booming voice shook the air round him; the half-hour; still early; only half-past eleven still.) For he understood young people; he liked them. There was always something cold in Clarissa, he thought. She had always, even as a girl, a sort of timidity, which in middle age becomes conventionality, and then it’s all up, it’s all up, he thought, looking rather drearily into the glassy depths, and wondering whether by calling at that hour he had annoyed her; overcome with shame suddenly at having been a fool; wept; been emotional; told her everything, as usual, as usual. As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on the mind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. Where there is nothing, Peter Walsh said to himself; feeling hollowed out, utterly empty within. Clarissa refused me, he thought. He stood there thinking, Clarissa refused me. Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes into her drawing-room on the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already. I am not late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says. Yet, though she is perfectly right, her voice, being the voice of the hostess, is reluctant to inflict its individuality. Some grief for the past holds it back; some concern for the present. It is half-past eleven, she says, and the sound of St. Margaret’s glides into the recesses of the heart and buries itself in ring after ring of sound, like something alive which wants to confide itself, to disperse itself, to be, with a tremor of delight, at rest--like Clarissa herself, thought Peter Walsh, coming down the stairs on the stroke of the hour in white. It is Clarissa herself, he thought, with a deep emotion, and an extraordinarily clear, yet puzzling, recollection of her, as if this bell had come into the room years ago, where they sat at some moment of great intimacy, and had gone from one to the other and had left, like a bee with honey, laden with the moment.

Then she looked at him, and their eyes meeting, much more seemed to be in common between them than had appeared possible. At any rate they had a grandfather in common; at any rate there was a kind of loyalty between them sometimes found between relations who have no other cause to like each other, as these two had. “Well, what’s the date of the wedding?” said Henry, the malicious mood now predominating. “I think some time in March,” she replied. “And afterwards?” he asked. “We take a house, I suppose, somewhere in Chelsea.” “It’s very interesting,” he observed, stealing another look at her. She lay back in her arm-chair, her feet high upon the side of the grate, and in front of her, presumably to screen her eyes, she held a newspaper from which she picked up a sentence or two now and again. Observing this, Henry remarked: “Perhaps marriage will make you more human.” At this she lowered the newspaper an inch or two, but said nothing. Indeed, she sat quite silent for over a minute. “When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?” she said suddenly. “I don’t think I ever do consider things like the stars,” Henry replied. “I’m not sure that that’s not the explanation, though,” he added, now observing her steadily. “I doubt whether there is an explanation,” she replied rather hurriedly, not clearly understanding what he meant. “What? No explanation of anything?” he inquired, with a smile. “Oh, things happen. That’s about all,” she let drop in her casual, decided way. “That certainly seems to explain some of your actions,” Henry thought to himself. “One thing’s about as good as another, and one’s got to do something,” he said aloud, expressing what he supposed to be her attitude, much in her accent. Perhaps she detected the imitation, for looking gently at him, she said, with ironical composure: “Well, if you believe that your life must be simple, Henry.” “But I don’t believe it,” he said shortly. “No more do I,” she replied. “What about the stars?” he asked a moment later. “I understand that you rule your life by the stars?