Nature — Vocabulary
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is in woods and waters a certain enticement and flattery, together with a failure to yield a present satisfaction.1 more

A susceptible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind, without the apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a wood-lot, or to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling-piece, or a fishing-rod.†1 more

The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought.†3 more

Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty.†1 more

Can a musical note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful!†1 more

However this may discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words.†1 more

Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face of external nature.†1 more

The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon.†1 more

Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year.†2 more

Literature, poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity.†1 more

That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with pains and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is for nothing.†

But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this topic, but not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus,[500] a shepherd), and in undescribable variety.†

Literature, poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity.†1 more

I would not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right of returning often to this old topic.†

Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes.†1 more

Now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed, then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora,[503] Fauna,[504] Ceres,[505] and Pomona,[506] to come in.1 more

These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it.†1 more

Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence.†1 more

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly related, there amid essences and billets-doux, to Himalaya mountain-chains[509] and the axis of the globe.†

A little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates.†