
The Conduct of Life
(1860)
Summary:
"The Conduct of Life" is a collection of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson that explores various aspects of individual behavior and human character. The essays cover a wide range of topics, including self-reliance, friendship, fate, and culture, among others. Throughout the book, Emerson emphasizes the importance of living an authentic and meaningful life, and encourages readers to cultivate their own unique talents and perspectives. He also critiques societal norms and conventions that stifle individual creativity and expression, and advocates for a more independent and adventurous approach to life. Overall, "The Conduct of Life" offers a philosophical and practical guide to personal growth and fulfillment.
Wealth
As soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, one of the first questions which all wish to have answered, is, How does that man get his living? And with reason. He is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is barbarous, until every industrious man can get his living without dishonest customs.
Read MoreCulture
The word of ambition at the present day is Culture. Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar.
Read MoreBehavior
The soul which animates Nature is not less significantly published in the figure, movement, and gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. This silent and subtile language is Manners; not what, but how. Life expresses. A statue has no tongue, and needs none.
Read MoreWorship
Some of my friends have complained, when the preceding papers were read, that we discussed Fate, Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform; gave too much line to the evil spirit of the times; too many cakes to Cerberus; that we ran Cudworth’s risk of making, by excess of candor, the argument of atheism so strong, that he could not answer it.
Read MoreConsiderations
Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enters into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.
Read MoreBeauty
The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education also. Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know. What a parade we make of our science, and how far off, and at arm’s length, it is from its objects! Our botany is all names, not powers: poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace and healing.
Read MoreIllusions
Some years ago, in company with an agreeable parter day in exploring the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit
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