Sublime

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and

The reader who would dig to the philosophical foundations of this is advised to read Hegel and Emerson for himself.

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.

Emerson made clear that the desire to conform not merely to those around you but to one’s prior views on a subject can be just as limiting and indeed hobbling.

C’est à lui que l’on doit la connaissance de soi avec ses nuances délicates que l’on trouve dans Le Prélude de Wordsworth et dans les essais d’Emerson, ainsi que, tout aussi subtile, l’analyse des relations sociales et personnelles qui émaille les romans de Jane Austen, de Flaubert et de Henry James.