Essays Before a Sonata

The doctrine of this "choice" may be extended to the distinction between literal-enthusiasm and natural-enthusiasm (right or wrong notes, good or bad tones against good or bad i...

Human attributes are definite enough when it comes to their description, but the expression of them, or the paralleling of them in an art-process, has to be, as said above, more...

Some of these attitudes, ungenerous or radical, generous or conservative (as you will), towards institutions dear to many, have no doubt given impressions unfavorable to Thoreau...

Cannot some of the most valuable kinds of utility and inspiration come from humility in its highest and purest forms? For is not the truest kind of humility a kind of glorified...

Intense lights--vague shadows--great pillars in a horizon are difficult things to nail signboards to. Emerson's outward-inward qualities make him hard to classify, but easy for...

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was probably one of the most psycho-intellectually brilliant, imaginative and flexible Americans to ever "walk the land of freedom." A graduate of Yale,...

Hence comes the difficulty--the futility of attempting to fasten on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that w...

Thoreau's susceptibility to natural sounds was probably greater than that of many practical musicians. True, this appeal is mainly through the sensational element which Herbert...

If he "truly seeks," he "will surely find" many things to sustain him. He can go to a part of Alcott's philosophy--"that all occupations of man's body and soul in their diversit...