Nature, Addresses, and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Read the Complete Text for free at NewThoughtLibrary.com

Divine Library is a free online public library that includes free eBook downloads and free audio books.

We work with New Thought Seekers and Sharers around the world insuring that all New Thought Texts in the Public Domain are available for you to read on the web for free, forever!

"Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit."
~ 2 Corinthians 2:17

Navigate through this book by clicking Next Page or Previous Page below the text of the page & jump directly to chapters using the chapter numbers above the text.

Serving New Thought is pleased to present

Ralph Waldo Emerson's

Nature, Addresses, and Lectures

Book page numbers, along with the number to the left of the .htm extension match the page numbers of the original books to ensure easy use in citations for research papers and books

Introduction - Nature - Commodity - Beauty - Language - Discipline - Idealism - Spirit - Prospects - The American Scholar - Divinity College, Cambridge - Literary Ethics - The Method of Nature - Man the Reformer - Lecture on the Times - The Transcendentalist - The Young American - Contents -

ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust: but we do not like your work.

'Then,' says the world, show me your own.'
'We have none.'
'What will you do, then? ' cries the world.
'We will wait.'
'How long? '
'Until the Universe beckons and calls us to work.'
'But whilst you wait, you grow old and useless.'

'Be it so: I can sit in a corner and perish (as you call it), but I will not move until I have the highest command. If no call should come for years, for centuries, then I know that the want of the Universe is the attestation of faith by my abstinence. Your virtuous projects, so called, do not cheer me. I know that which shall come will cheer me. If I cannot work at least I need not lie. All that is clearly due to-day is not to lie. In other places other men have encountered sharp trials, and have behaved themselves well. The martyrs were sawn asunder, or hung alive on meat-hooks. Cannot we screw our courage to patience and truth, and without complaint, or even with good-humor, await our turn of action in the Infinite Counsels? '

But to come a little closer to the secret of these

page scan

331

PREVIOUS PAGE - NEXT PAGE