Nature

The stars are such a common sight that we take them for granted. This is what Ralph Waldo Emerson implies in Nature. Yet if the stars appeared “one night in a thousand years,” people would look at...

The mood of a piece of writing is the feelings or emotion it conveys. Emerson's point in the paragraph in which this sentence appears is that the pleasure or emotion nature evokes is based on a...

Personification is the attribution of human qualities to something which is not human. In chapter 1, Emerson states that Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort...

In chapter 1 of his essay Nature, Emerson writes, The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relationship between man and the vegetable. Emerson...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" has a lyrical tone, as much of the writing has the quality of music or poetry. For example, Emerson writes the following: The rays that come from those heavenly...

In Nature, Emerson discusses communing with the natural world in the woods. He states, first, that most people interact with the woods on a superficial level. As for himself, however, he...

In his chapter called "Beauty," Emerson outlines the three aspects of beauty: the physical, the spiritual, and the intellectual. First, he calls physical beauty the beauty of "simple perception."...

In Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson endeavors to clarify the difficulties and hindrances to Man's successful union with Nature. From a reading of excerpts of his book, he explains how we...

As always, it is particularly important to look at quotations in context to help us be aware of what the author is trying to say by including them in their writing. In this case, if we have a look...

Emerson feels that, though a human being might own a piece of property or a plot of land, no one can truly own nature itself or the really significant things that nature can offer us: its beauty,...

I believe that what Emerson means by saying that our age is retrospective is that we value thinkers and artists and heros of the past more than we value those of our own times. For example, we...

History teachers would not like this quote from Emerson. What he is saying is that the people (of Emerson's time) too often look back to history to learn more about their present situations....

Emerson states his themes pretty straightforwardly. He outlines a number of nature's beneficial effects on human beings and how it seems to even restore us to a better and more fundamental version...

Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to...

Emerson actually suggests that there are multiple unremarkable events which could cause him to feel what he calls a "perfect exhilaration." The example he gives is of an occasion when he was...

Emerson uses a fair amount of figurative language, rhetorical devices which make his writing all the more interesting and vivid and help him to make his argument better by keeping his audience more...

In essence, this quote means that the narrator finds a companion such as a friend or acquaintance to be "a trifle or disturbance" when he is in the midst of contemplating the various facets of...

In this quote, Emerson is encouraging readers to take advantage of the abilities they have and to set out and achieve all that is possible. One of the main themes of this text is the idea that all...

In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of the stars as a prime example of the natural world and its relationship with and effects on human beings. Emerson proposes a scenario for his readers to...

The Transcendentalists believed the presence of God or the divine (however they might individually define it) was made manifest in nature. Emerson speaks to this in the above quote, saying we...

In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson employs both a philosophical tone to appeal to his readers' intellect and a poetic tone to delight their emotions. Let's look at a couple of examples of each. The...

Within the essay "Nature," Emerson utilizes parallel structure in asserting, "The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the...

In "Nature," Ralph Waldo Emerson begins by discussing what he means by the word "nature" in the poetic sense, saying that its primary meaning is "the integrity of impression made by manifold...

The death of a "dear friend" is the question in this quotation from Emerson. Who is the dear friend, and why has he died? Emerson writes, "To a man laboring under calamity . . ." In this, he is...

Emerson sees nature as something divine and original in the universe. It is our true state. He suggests that as children, having not had many years in constructed societies and unnatural...

According to Emerson's "Nature," we are all connected to nature most truly when we are alone. The "heavenly bodies," in particular, are what connect us to the sublime, because they represent...

In his essay Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson laments the conformity imposed upon students in the education system. Emerson feels that people are brought up to perceive the world exactly as the ancients...

In his essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson uses the philosophy of transcendentalism from other schools of thought on humankind’s acquisition of knowledge. Expanding upon rationalist and empiricist...

Emerson suggests, in the first chapter of Nature, that when we talk about nature as he is—describing the “kindred” relationship between nature and the human mind, that the wisest person can learn...

In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson sought to explain his own philosophical theories about the place of people in the universe. In the Introduction, he explains that he sees "nature" as everything...

The full sentence says, "Thus in Art, does Nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works." By this, Emerson means that when we view and become filled with the...

Both essays show Emerson at his most idiosyncratic. These are beautiful essays that make amazing assertions and whose arguments are, in part, exercises in self-justification. In “Self Reliance,”...

Early in his 1836 essay, Emerson observes that there is a difference in the way a man regards nature as he moves from childhood to adulthood. The relationship is still there, but it evolves from...

Here is a sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all...

In one of the opening lines to Emerson's text, the quote brings out the special and unique quality that Emerson sees in the natural world. The description of the stars as "heavenly worlds"...

The first way that the woods can transform a man is by turning him back into a child. Not literally of course, but the woods can restore the child like wonder in a man. "In the woods too, a man...

In Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature, the poet praises the natural world. Nature is Emerson's first book, and his love and respect for nature and the guidance he believes mankind can find in the...

The Transcendentalist movement (of which many see Emerson as the unofficial "leader") was about religious perceptions "rooted in the ideas of American democracy," a response by a group of Bostonian...

Emerson believed that spending time in the woods was good for a person's all-around wellbeing. Early on in Nature, Emerson discusses how going out into the woods and gazing at the sky can remind a...

In "Beauty," the third chapter of Emerson's essay Nature, Emerson argues that "Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue." In other words, God has arranged nature so that things which are virtuous...

Transcendentalism was a movement in the late 1820s and 1830s. The ideas are not religious in nature, but an understanding of life and how everyone is connected in the world. Key concepts of the...

Just prior to this quotation, Emerson has explained that, if we really want to be solitary, we must go out into nature—not just to our own rooms. When we are surrounded by the trappings of society,...

Emerson famously says in this essay that in the woods he becomes a "transparent eyeball," or "part and particle of God," phrases which suggest a kind of dissolution of the self. Understanding...

Tension exists in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" because, according to Emerson, Nature and Culture operate as competing forces. In the introduction to "Nature," Emerson claims, Our age is...

Nature makes Emerson feel as though he has achieved true solitude, as it is not enough to simply seclude oneself in one's house. One must actually remove oneself from all trappings of society,...

Emerson's quote from his work, Nature, helps to bring out how individuals can exist apart from others, yet keep them in mind. This is essential to the writing process. Just as Emerson constructs...