Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
I fell in with a humorist, on my travels, who had in his chamber a cast of the Rondanini Medusa, and who assured me that the name which that fine work of art bore in the catalogues was a misnomer, as he was convinced that the sculptor who carved it intended it for Memory, the...
I fell in with a humorist, on my travels, who had in his chamber a cast of the Rondanini Medusa, and who assured me that the name which that fine work of art bore in the catalog...
2. Part 2No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature, of forces so prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the beautiful skill whereby the engine i...
3. Part 3It is a curious proof of our conviction that the artist does not feel himself to be the parent of his work, and is as much surprised at the effect as we, that we are so unwillin...
4. Part 4But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none. The virtue of books is, to be readable, and of orators, to be interesting; and this is a gift of Nature; as Demosthenes, the mos...
5. Part 5The statement of the fact, however, sinks before the statement of the law, which requires immeasurably higher powers, and is a rarest gift, being in all great masters one and th...
6. Part 6Another man is a mechanical genius, an inventor of looms, a builder of ships,--a ship-building foundation, and could achieve nothing if he should dissipate himself on books or o...
7. Part 71. Whatever brings the dweller into a finer life, what educates his eye, or ear, or hand, whatever purifies and enlarges him, may well find place there. And yet let him not thin...
8. Part 8The first planter, the savage, without helpers, without tools, looking chiefly to safety from his enemy,--man or beast,--takes poor land. The better lands are loaded with timber...
9. Part 9This element of illusion lends all its force to hide the values of present time. Who is he that does not always find himself doing something less than his best task? “What are y...
10. Part 10Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train. Dr. J...
11. Part 11In novels the most serious questions are beginning to be discussed. What made the popularity of “Jane Eyre,” but that a central question was answered in some sort? The question...
12. Part 12And still the gods and giants are so known, and still they play the same game in all the million mansions of heaven and of earth; at all tables, clubs, and _tête-à-têtes_, the l...
13. Part 13Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin; shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the m...
14. Part 14Our American people cannot be taxed with slowness in performance or in praising their performance. The earth is shaken by our engineries. We are feeling our youth and nerve and...
15. Part 15The fundamental fact in our metaphysic constitution is the correspondence of man to the world, so that every change in that writes a record in the mind. The mind yields sympathe...
16. Part 16The cynical creed or lampoon of the market is refuted by the universal prayer for long life, which is the verdict of Nature, and justified by all history. We have, it is true, e...