12
votes
Accepted
From which book or essay are these words by Ralph Waldo Emerson? "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year..."
This passage is assembled (in the common fashion of inspirational texts) from bits and pieces, mostly but not entirely by Emerson. Let’s take it sentence by sentence.
One of the illusions is that the ...
- 53.5k
9
votes
Why did Emerson choose 'hobgoblin' in his quote 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds'?
Sense 2 of "Hobgoblin" in my OED is
fig. An object which inspires superstitious dread or apprehension; a bogy, bugbear.
It gives citations dating from 1709 to 1841-2, the latter being the ...
- 3,975
8
votes
Accepted
What are 'The cobweb clues of Rosamond'?
Rosamund is Rosamund Clifford, Henry II's mistress. Legends claim that his wife, Eleanor, tracked her down to the heart of a maze that Henry had hidden her in and killed her. Sometimes, the legends ...
- 5,957
5
votes
From which book or essay are these words by Ralph Waldo Emerson? "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year..."
The lines were written in a letter to one of his daughters and appear on page 489 of volume II of 'A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson by James Elliot Cabot'.
However, the extract quoted there is absent ...
- 18.6k
3
votes
"Tradition is meant to be broken" - who said it, Emerson or Thoreau?
There are a number of things said by both your candidates which have some resonance with the phrase or express ideas about breaking with tradition, eg:
When we have broken our god of tradition and ...
- 18.6k
3
votes
Why did Emerson choose 'hobgoblin' in his quote 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds'?
Emerson's Essay
To get Emerson's full meaning, which the existing answer indicates was and could only be based upon the existing common usage of his time, you can do no better to start than by reading ...
- 131
1
vote
Accepted
Looking for location of a quote, "Nothing can work damage to me except myself", attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson
In Emerson's Essays: First Series (1841), he wrote this phrase but attributed it to Saint Bernard (not the dog):
The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that ...
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