Transcendentalist Notes

Symphony No. 1--The Transcendental,
Richard Pousette-Dart (1942)

Scholars: Copy and paste the following post into a Word document; then place it in your binder. You may also handwrite if you prefer.

Key Transcendentalist Quotations

1. “Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string” (Emerson).

2. “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist” (Emerson).

3. “No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature” (Emerson).

4. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” (Emerson).

5. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines” (Emerson).

6. “To be great is to be misunderstood” (Emerson).

7. “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life” (Thoreau).

8. “An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” (Thoreau)

9. “We are determined to be starved before we are hungry” (Thoreau).

10. “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails” (Thoreau).

11. “I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born” (Thoreau).

12. “It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves . . .How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!” (Thoreau)

13. “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to life the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours” (Thoreau).

14. “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names” (Thoreau).

15. “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away” (Thoreau).

16. “It is life near the bone where it is sweetest” (Thoreau).

17. “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.  There is more day to dawn.  The sun is but a morning star” (Thoreau).

Key Transcendentalist Ideas

1. Self-reliance, individualism, and non-conformity are very important.

2. The true reality is spiritual, transcending the physical world.

3. Human imagination and intuition are gifts.

4. Science does not have all the answers.

5. The universe has an “Oversoul” that connects all: Nature and man.

6. Nature is a great source of inspiration.

7. Awareness of social issues and action against injustice are important.
8. The relationship between the sexes should be on new footing.  Women and men are equal.