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A review by jonscott9
Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1824 by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Waldo Emerson Forbes
5.0
What to say? It's Emerson. Emerson is eternal.
I like that a lot of his sentiments are echoed later by one Frederick Buechner, a personal fave, who surprised even himself in becoming a Presbyterian minister in his life, in addition to the Princeton instructor and scholar and writer he already was.
"I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching."
"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory."
"I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated."
[what I'd like to believe about my own father:]
"My aunt had an eye that went through and through you like a needle. 'She was endowed,' she said, 'with the fatal gift of penetration.' She disgusted everybody because she knew them too well."
"Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on."
"If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards."
"We resent all criticism which denies us anything in our line of advance."
"I look with pity upon the young preachers who float into the profession thinking all is safe."
"Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function."
"The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being. ... Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism."
And the beat goes on.
I like that a lot of his sentiments are echoed later by one Frederick Buechner, a personal fave, who surprised even himself in becoming a Presbyterian minister in his life, in addition to the Princeton instructor and scholar and writer he already was.
"I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching."
"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory."
"I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated."
[what I'd like to believe about my own father:]
"My aunt had an eye that went through and through you like a needle. 'She was endowed,' she said, 'with the fatal gift of penetration.' She disgusted everybody because she knew them too well."
"Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on."
"If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards."
"We resent all criticism which denies us anything in our line of advance."
"I look with pity upon the young preachers who float into the profession thinking all is safe."
"Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function."
"The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being. ... Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism."
And the beat goes on.