Sublime

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

“It is the best of humanity, I think, that goes out to walk. In happy hours all affairs may be wisely postponed for this. Dr. Johnson said, ‘Few men know how to take a walk,’ and it is pretty certain that Dr. Johnson was not one of those few. It is a fine art; there are degrees of proficiency, and we distinguish the professors from the apprentices.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.

Paradoxalement, c’est en portant son individualité à son point d’incandescence que l’homme parvient à l’universel et qu’il devient grand. Montaigne fut ainsi, Emerson aimait beaucoup Montaigne.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict s

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Emerson said,

It is now obvious that when men of truly poetical genius appear, they will describe more of the particular feelings of the inner life than of the general facts of the great life of the world.