Emerson's essays are prophetic. Like peeling an onion; every time you read them, you understand life, the human race, and yourself, at a deeper level.

I accidentally found this book in my university library in Australia while I was looking for Thoreau's "Walden". One glance at the Contents page had me hooked, and I can tell you that this has to be one of the most insightful and powerful books ever written. Whether you believe in Christianity, Buddhism, or the Force, this is a must for anyone's personal spiritual canon. The man was a Jedi, and the book is total butter.

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I know that many people don't like to read essays of any kind, but all I can say is that Ralph Waldo Emerson is simply different! Nobody has the gift to write essays and analyze life like him.

His words and ideas are so powerful and deep that we soon realize that they didn't come only from a brilliant mind, but also from a warm-hearted soul!

That's exactly what this book is about: Its sentences break through your brain and penetrate right into your soul! Emerson's optimistic view on human beings and life can only reinforce our courage in mankind and, especially, in ourselves!

What else can I say? His speech is direct, he defends all the good values, tell us to have confidence in ourselves and show us that passing through life with dignity is a matter of choice and courage, and that it simply doesn't change with time. It was like this a thousand years ago, it will probably follow the same rules a thousand years f! ! rom now.

This is the book I grab to comfort my spirit when I'm having difficult times... :) It is a guide that make us believe that anything is possible when we really want it! " Self-Reliance ", one of the essays inside this book, is a masterpiece in its own and I believe it should be studied in every high school, instead some of the crap we are usually obliged to read!

This book can shape your spirit and your mind. It is also possibly THE BEST self-help book you could ever own and, yet, a great literary work.

I would rate this book as ageless and I'm sure the future generations will be still interested in it, in the same way we are in those ancient Greek and Roman texts.

This is precious culture and food for your soul as a bargain! Do not waste more time. READ IT!!!

Crase, highly touted for his poetry book "The Revisionist", has given us what amounts to highlighted and underlined passages from authors "who have claimed" him. These include Emerson, Stevens, Gertrude Stein, Rachel Carson, W.E.B DuBois, William James, Thoreau, Whitman, Langston Hughes, Aldo Leopold, John Ashbery, etc. Most are poets. He has said that placing the passages side by side, arranging them, involves "choice and commitment" which he finds more interesting than reading one man's opinions.

He has arranged these selections under headings which are commentaries in themselves: Under the heading "Doing Your Thing" you find Emerson, Stein, and Ashbery, but then as a footnote, quotations from politicians, Bush and Reagan (and their wives), that set the prior, more profound reflections into greater relief.

Under "Majority Rule" Emily Dickinson: "Dear friends--we cannot believe for each other."

Under "Immortality" Emerson: "I think we may be sure that, whatever may come after death, no one will be disappointed."

Wallace Stevens under "Home": "Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me life is an affair of places and that is the trouble."

A particular favorite entry under "Comparative Literature": Gertrude Stein, b. 1874 Rainer Maria Rilke, b. 1875

There is so much here to return to again and again--and much of it is unknown as Crase chose to select passages from these authors' lesser known works--much to encourage a return to these American originals. Much to encourage rumination.