Birth to Blurs

A Concordance to the Collected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Compiled by Eugene F. Irey 

birth, n. (52)

    DSA 1.128 8 In [the Christian church], all of us have had our birth and nurture.

    LE 1.170 13 Since the birth of Niebuhr and Wolf, Roman and Greek history have been written anew.

    MN 1.223 11 The entrance of this [great reality] into his mind seems to be the birth of man.

    Con 1.306 9 The youth...is an innovator by the fact of his birth.

    YA 1.394 7 ...in England...such is the transcendent honor accorded to wealth and birth, that no man of letters...is received into the best society, except as a lion and a show.

    OS 2.272 25 We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age than that which is measured from the year of our natural birth.

    Art1 2.360 16 ...that house and weather and manner of living which poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear...will serve as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours itself indifferently through all.

    Pt1 3.11 24 ...the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.

    Pt1 3.20 8 ...birth and death...are emblems;...

    Pt1 3.21 3 All the facts of...birth...are symbols of the passage of the world into the soul of man...

    Exp 3.45 17 Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature...

    Mrs1 3.148 5 ...elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

    PPh 4.50 4 What is the great end of all [said Krishna], you shall now learn from me. It is soul...exempt from birth, growth and decay...

    PPh 4.66 1 [Plato's] patrician tastes laid stress on the distinctions of birth.

    SwM 4.105 15 ...the proximity of these geniuses, one or other of whom had introduced all his leading ideas, makes Swedenborg another example of the difficulty...of proving...the first birth and annunciation of one of the laws of nature.

    SwM 4.136 4 My learning is such as God gave me in my birth and habit...

    ShP 4.206 3 We tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birth-place...

    NMW 4.225 17 [The man in the street] finds [Napoleon], like himself, by birth a citizen...

    GoW 4.281 15 There must be a man behind the book; a personality which by birth and quality is pledged to the doctrines there set forth...

    ET5 5.92 18 [The English] have approved...their British birth, by husbandry and immense wheat harvests;...

    ET11 5.180 5 ...[the English lords] rightly wear the token of the glebe that gave them birth...

    ET11 5.186 15 The upper classes have only birth, say the people here [in England], and not thoughts.

    F 6.11 19 If, later, [these drones] give birth to some superior individual...all the ancestors are gladly forgotten.

    Ctr 6.144 13 Each class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has not;...the democrat, on birth and breeding.

    Bhr 6.188 24 I had received, said a sibyl, I had received at birth the fatal gift of penetration;...

    Bty 6.286 7 At the birth of Winckelmann...side by side with this arid, departmental, post mortem science, rose an enthusiasm in the study of Beauty;...

    Bty 6.287 15 The ancients believed that a genius or demon took possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him;...

    Art2 7.38 10 What is in, will out. It struggles to the birth.

    WD 7.172 17 We are coaxed, flattered and duped...from birth to death;...

    OA 7.318 1 Saadi found in a mosque at Damascus an old Persian of a hundred and fifty years, who was dying, and was saying to himself, I said, coming into the world by birth, I will enjoy myself for a few moments.

    SA 8.77 8 He forbids to despair;/ His cheeks mantle with mirth;/ And the unimagined good of men/ Is yeaning at the birth./

    Aris 10.48 15 ...society must have the benefit of the best leaders. How to obtain them? Birth has been tried and failed.

    Schr 10.279 27 What is the use of...birth, or breeding, or money to a maniac?

    Schr 10.280 4 ...society...sometimes is for an age together a maniac, with birth, breeding, beauty, cunning, strength and money.

    Plu 10.293 5 It is remarkable that of an author so familiar as Plutarch...not even the dates of his birth and death, should have come down to us.

    LLNE 10.364 19 There is agreement in the testimony that [Brook Farm] was...to many, the most important period of their life, the birth of valued friendships...

    EzRy 10.393 7 The usual experiences of men, birth, marriage, sickness, death, burial;...[Ezra Ripley] studied them all...

    MMEm 10.409 11 ...so have I [Mary Moody Emerson] wandered from the cradle over...the cabinets of natural or moral philosophy, the recesses of ancient and modern lore. All say-Forbear to enter the pales of the initiated by birth, wealth, talents and patronage.

    MMEm 10.422 2 ...a few lamps held out in the firmament enable us...to date the revelations of God to man. But these lamps are held...to divide the history of God's operations in the birth and death of nations...

    SlHr 10.446 25 [Samuel Hoar] had his birth and breeding in a little country town...

    EWI 11.113 5 ...be it enacted, that all and every person who, on the first August, 1834, shall be holden in slavery within any such British colony as aforesaid...shall be absolutely and forever manumitted; and that the children thereafter born to any such persons, and the offspring of such children, shall, in like manner, be free, from their birth;...

    JBB 11.267 16 ...I do not wonder that gentlemen find traits of relation readily between [John Brown] and themselves. One finds a relation in the church...another in the place of his birth.

    ALin 11.328 14 How beautiful to see/ Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,/ Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;/ One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,/ Not lured by any cheat of birth,/ But by his clear-grained human worth,/ And brave old wisdom of sincerity!/

    RBur 11.439 15 At the first announcement...that the 25th of January [1859] was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warmed the great English race...to keep the festival.

    RBur 11.440 12 ...[Robert Burns's] birth, breeding and fortunes were low.

    Shak1 11.452 9 [Shakespeare's] birth marked a great wine year when wonderful grapes ripened in the vintage of God...

    PLT 12.48 25 I have heard that idiot children are known from their birth by the circumstance that their hands do not close round anything.

    Mem 12.93 1 [Memory] is a scripture written day by day from the birth of the man;...

    Mem 12.103 13 The poor short lone fact dies at the birth.

    Bost 12.198 9 ...no good birth or breeding...can bestow that delicacy and grandeur of bearing which belong only to a mind accustomed to celestial conversation.

    MAng1 12.242 13 ...a nobler sentiment, uttered by [Michelangelo], is contained in his reply to a letter of Vasari, who had informed him of the rejoicings made at the house of his nephew Lionardo, at Florence, over the birth of another Buonarotti.

    Milt1 12.268 24 [Milton's] birth fell upon the agitated years when the discontents of the English Puritans were fast drawing to a head against the tyranny of the Stuarts.

birthday, n. (5)

    Pt1 3.12 13 This day shall be better than my birthday...

    ET7 5.120 27 On the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge;...

    PPo 8.239 1 The religion [of the East] teaches an inexorable Destiny. It distinguishes only two days in each man's history,-his birthday, called the Day of the Lot, and the Day of Judgment.

    HDC 11.76 19 ...you, my fathers [veterans of battle of Concord]...may well bear a chief part in keeping this peaceful birthday of our town.

    Scot 11.463 7 ...to the rare tribute of a centennial anniversary of his birthday...[Scott] is not less entitled...

birthplace [birth-place], n. (1)

    ShP 4.206 4.206 We tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birth-place...

birthplace, n. (5)

    ET9 5.147 24 ...[the Englishman] hides no defect of his form, features, dress, connection, or birthplace...

    ET16 5.286 17 We [Emerson and Carlyle] passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could see little but the edge of a wood, though Carlyle had wished to pay closer attention to the birthplace of the Decrees of Clarendon.

    Plu 10.319 6 What a fruit and fitting monument of [Alexander's] best days was his city Alexandria, to be the birthplace or home of Plotinus, St. Augustine...

    JBS 11.281 19 ...our blind statesmen go up and down...hunting for the origin of this new heresy [abolition]. They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace...

    CL 12.148 14 Our Aryan progenitors in Asia celebrated the winds as the conveying Maruts, traversers of places difficult of access. Stable is their birthplace in the sky...

births, n. (6)

    Fdsp 2.209 11 Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal.

    Art1 2.363 14 [The arts] are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct.

    SwM 4.96 6 The soul having been often born, or, as the Hindoos say, travelling the path of existence through thousands of births...there is nothing of which she has not gained the knowledge...

    NMW 4.224 10 The second [democratic] class is selfish also...always outnumbering the other [conservative class] and recruiting its numbers every hour by births.

    Ctr 6.164 22 ...these boys who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or three births too late, to make the best scholars of.

    Farm 7.140 17 Early marriages and the number of births are indissolubly connected with abundance of food;...

birth-star, n. (1)

    F 6.23 23 They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane...

biscuit, n. (1)

    Boks 7.210 4 Now [the bidders for the Valdarfer Boccaccio] talked apart, now ate a biscuit, now made a bet...

bisected, adj. (2)

    PPh 4.68 16 A key to the method and completeness of Plato is his twice bisected line.

    SwM 4.116 27 The fact [of Correspondence] thus explicitly stated [by Swedenborg] is implied...in the structure of language. Plato knew it, as is evident from his twice bisected line in the sixth book of the Republic.

bisecting, v. (1)

    Prch 10.226 12 ...when [the railroads] came into his poetic Westmoreland, bisecting every delightful valley...[Wordsworth] yet manned himself to say,-In spite of all that Beauty may disown/ In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace/ Her lawful offspring in man's art/...

bisects, v. (1)

    Comp 2.97 4 An inevitable dualism bisects nature...

bishop, n. (12)

    NMW 4.250 9 In 1806 [Napoleon] conversed with Fournier, bishop of Montpellier, on matters of theology.

    NMW 4.250 15 The Emperor told Josephine that he disputed like a devil on these two points [hell, and salvation out of the pale of the church], on which the bishop [Fournier] was inexorable.

    ET7 5.120 27 On the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge;...

    ET13 5.222 15 The most sensible and well-informed [English] men possess the power of thinking just so far as the bishop in religious matters...

    ET13 5.222 27 [The English university] ripens a bishop, and extrudes a philosopher.

    ET13 5.226 27 ...a bishop [in England] is only a surpliced merchant.

    ET13 5.230 5 If a bishop [in England] meets an intelligent gentleman and reads fatal interrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine with him.

    ET15 5.269 9 One bishop fares badly [in the London Times] for his rapacity...

    Cour 7.258 11 The Norse Sagas relate that when Bishop Magne reproved King Sigurd for his wicked divorce, the priest who attended the bishop, expecting every moment when the savage king would burst with rage and slay his superior, said that he saw the sky no bigger than a calf-skin.

    Imtl 8.346 24 You shall not say, O my bishop, O my pastor, is there any resurrection?

    Chr2 10.118 21 How many people are there in Boston? Some two hundred thousand. Well, then so many sects. Of course, each poor soul loses all his old stays; no bishop watches him...

    CPL 11.494 1 The bishop of Cavaillon, Petrarch's friend, in a playful experiment locked up the poet's library...

Bishop, n. (1)

    ET13 5.227 15 The [English] Bishop is elected by the Dean and Prebends of the cathedral.

Bishop of London, n. (2)

    ET1 5.13 15 ...on learning that I had been in Malta and Sicily, [Coleridge] compared one island with the other, repeating what he had said to the Bishop of London when he returned from that country, that Sicily was an excellent school of political economy;...

    FRep 11.534 12 [A man's life] is manufactured for him. The tailor makes your dress;...the Bishop of London your faith.

bishopric, n. (1)

    ET13 5.226 13 ...when wealth accrues to a chaplaincy, a bishopric, or rectorship, it requires moneyed men for its stewards...

Bishops, Bench of, n. (1)

    ET15 5.269 9 [The London Times] makes rude work with the Board of Admiralty. The Bench of Bishops is still less safe.

bishops, n. (10)

    ET6 5.102 13 The cabmen [in England] have [pluck];...the bishops have it;...

    ET10 5.169 24 A part of the money earned [in England] returns to the brain to buy schools, libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists and artists with;...

    ET13 5.220 2 These [English] minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists. No church has had more learned, industrious or devoted men; plenty of clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, would turn their backs on no man.

    ET13 5.227 6 Brougham...said, How will the reverend bishops of the other house be able to express their due abhorrence of the crime of perjury...

    Pow 6.79 27 I remarked in England...that in literary circles, the men of trust and consideration...university deans and professors, bishops too, were... usually of a low and ordinary intellectuality...

    Clbs 7.246 6 [A man of irreproachable behavior and excellent sense] said the fact was incontestable that the society of gypsies was more attractive than that of bishops.

    Chr2 10.112 13 In England, the gentlemen, the journals, and now, at last, the churchmen and bishops, have fallen away from the Anglican Church.

    Carl 10.490 20 They keep Carlyle as a sort of portable cathedral-bell, which they like to produce in companies where he is unknown, and set a-swinging, to the surprise and consternation of all persons,-bishops, courtiers, scholars, writers...

    Bost 12.202 2 [The Massachusetts colonists] could say to themselves, Well, at least this yoke of man, of bishops, of courtiers, of dukes, is off my neck.

    Milt1 12.266 20 [Milton] told the bishops that instead of showing the reason of their lowly condition from divine example and command, they seek to prove their high preeminence from human consent and authority.

Bishops, n. (2)

    Bost 12.207 11 With all their love of his person, [the people of Boston] took immense pleasure in...contravening the counsel of the clergy; as they had come so far for the sweet satisfaction of resisting the Bishops and the King.

    PPr 12.384 17 It is plain that...all the great classes of English society must read [Carlyle's Past and Present], even those whose existence it proscribes. Poor Queen Victoria...poor Primates and Bishops,-poor Dukes and Lords!

bishop's, n. (2)

    SwM 4.136 20 The Lutheran bishop's son, for whom the heavens are opened...with all these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the Lutheran bishop's son;...

    SwM 4.136 27 The Lutheran bishop's son, for whom the heavens are opened...with all these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the Lutheran bishop's son;...

Bishops of Durham, England, (1)

    ET4 5.51 6 Everything English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements. The language is mixed;...a country of extemes,--dukes and chartists, Bishops of Durham and naked heathen colliers;...

Bishops Waltham, England, n (1)

    ET16 5.286 20 At Bishopstoke we [Emerson and Carlyle] stopped, and found Mr. H[elps]., who...took us to his house at Bishops Waltham.

Bishopstoke, England, n. (1)

    ET16 5.286 18 At Bishopstoke we [Emerson and Carlyle] stopped, and found Mr. H[elps]....

Bismarck, Otto Eduard von, (1)

    PC 8.218 9 If [a man] has...administrative faculty, like Chatham or Bismarck, he is the king's king.

bit, n. (10)

    Tran 1.332 5 The sturdy capitalist...must set [his banking-house], at last... on a mass of unknown materials and solidity...which...goes spinning away... a bit of bullet...

    Exp 3.57 3 A man is like a bit of Labrador spar...

    Nat2 3.182 13 If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city.

    ET16 5.282 20 The golden fleece again, of Jason, was the compass,--a bit of loadstone...

    Ill 6.317 8 [The new style or mythology] is like the cement which the peddler sells at the door; he makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can never buy of him a bit of the cement which will make it hold when he is gone.

    Elo1 7.96 16 [The sturdy countryman's] hard head went through, in childhood, the drill of Calvinism...so that he stands in the New England assembly a purer bit of New England than any...

    Boks 7.217 4 Money, and killing, and the Wandering Jew, and persuading the lover that his mistress is betrothed to another, these are the main-springs [of the novel]; new names, but no new qualities in the men and women. Hence the vain endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold which has rolled like a brook through our hands.

    Thor 10.469 4 I think [Thoreau's] fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord...was...a playful expression of his conviction...that the best place for each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise: I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world.

    FSLC 11.201 11 Hills and Halletts, servile editors by the hundred, we could have spared. But [Webster]...the first man of the North, in the very moment of mounting the throne, irresistibly taking the bit in his mouth and the collar on his neck...

    AKan 11.262 10 A bit of ground [in California] that your hand could cover was worth one or two hundred dollars...

bite, n. (2)

    Cir 2.315 7 Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite of snakes;...

    Mem 12.98 12 The more [the orator] is heated, the wider he sees; he seems to remember all he ever knew; thus certifying us...that what his mind grasps it does not let go. 'T is the bull-dog bite; you must cut off the head to loosen the teeth.

bite, v. (7)

    LT 1.277 19 Those who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefits of mankind, are narrow...men, and affect us as the insane do. They bite us, and we run mad also.

    ET10 5.168 2 England is aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, of drugs...finding that milk will not nourish...nor pepper bite the tongue...

    Cour 7.257 6 Cut off [the snapping-turtle's] head, and the teeth will not let go the stick. Break the egg of the young, and the little embryo...bites fiercely; these vivacious creatures contriving--shall we say?--not only to bite after they are dead, but also to bite before they are born.

    Cour 7.257 7 Cut off [the snapping-turtle's] head, and the teeth will not let go the stick. Break the egg of the young, and the little embryo...bites fiercely; these vivacious creatures contriving--shall we say?--not only to bite after they are dead, but also to bite before they are born.

    Res 8.153 1 ...the cow, the rabbit, the insect, bite the sweet and tender bark [of the willow];...

    Grts 8.311 12 He can toil terribly, said Cecil of Sir Walter Raleigh. These few words sting and bite and lash us when we are frivolous.

    EWI 11.143 4 Our planet, before the age of written history, had its races of savages, like...the animalcules that wiggle and bite in a drop of putrid water.

Bite-me-if-you-dare, n. (1)

    CL 12.146 25 Here [on Estabrook Farm] are varieties of apple not found in Downing or Loudon. The Tartaric variety, and Cow-apple, and the Bite-me-if- you-dare...

biter, n. (1)

    PPh 4.77 24 ...the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth.

biters, n. (2)

    F 6.8 5 Without...groping after intestinal parasites or infusory biters...the forms of the shark...are hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature.

    War 11.154 21 The microscope reveals miniature butchery in atomies and infinitely small biters that swim and fight in an illuminated drop of water;...

bites, v. (2)

    MoS 4.153 8 [The men of the senses] believe that mustard bites the tongue...

    Cour 7.257 4 Break the egg of the young [snapping-turtle], and the little embryo, before yet the eyes are open, bites fiercely;...

biting, adj. (1)

    Supl 10.174 1 ...these raptures of fire and frost, which...make the speech salt and biting, would cost me the days of well-being which are now so cheap to me, yet so valued.

biting, v. (1)

    PPh 4.77 23 [Plato] has clapped copyright on the world. This is the ambition of individualism. But the mouthful proves too large. Boa constrictor has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. He falls abroad in the attempt; and biting, gets strangled...

bits, n. (3)

    ET4 5.59 1 Another pair [of Norse kings] ride out on a morning for a frolic, and finding no weapon near, will take the bits out of their horses' mouths and crush each other's heads with them...

    ET6 5.114 11 Hither [to an English dress-dinner] come all manner of clever projects, bits of popular science...

    Elo1 7.91 12 ...people always perceive whether you drive or whether the horses take the bits in their teeth and run.

bitten, adj. (1)

    PPh 4.77 24 ...the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth.

bitten, v. (1)

    Gts 3.162 7 The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

bitter, adj. (21)

    MN 1.214 25 The reforms whose fame now fills the land...are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end.

    Comp 2.104 22 [Men] think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,--the sweet, without the other side, the bitter.

    Prd1 2.235 20 ...let [a man] put the bread he eats at his own disposal, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other men;...

    ET4 5.51 2 Everything English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic elements. The language is mixed;...the currents of thought are counter... aggressive freedom and hospitable law with bitter class-legislation;...

    ET8 5.135 7 [The Englishman] is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters...

    ET11 5.196 1 Fuller records the observation of foreigners, that Englishmen, by making their children gentlemen before they are men, cause they are so seldom wise men. This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson's bitter apology for primogeniture, that it makes but one fool in a family.

    ET13 5.224 3 ...[the Anglican Church's] instinct is hostile to all change in politics, literature, or social arts. The church has not been the founder...of the Free School, of whatever aims at diffusion of knowledge. The Platonists of Oxford are as bitter against this heresy, as Thomas Taylor.

    ET15 5.270 21 [The editors of the London Times] watch the hard and bitter struggles of the authors of each liberal movement...

    ET17 5.294 19 [Wordsworth] was nationally bitter on the French; bitter on Scotchmen, too.

    ET18 5.300 12 A bitter class-legislation gives power [in England] to those who are rich enough to buy a law.

    F 6.45 25 Such an one [a strong, astringent, billious nature] has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first...then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.

    Elo1 7.96 25 [The sturdy countryman] has learned his lessons in a bitter school.

    Suc 7.310 16 Despondency comes readily enough to the most sanguine. The cynic has only to follow their hint with his bitter confirmation...

    Imtl 8.333 2 All laughter at man is bitter...

    Schr 10.286 16 [The scholar] is to eat insult, drink insult, be clothed and shod in insult until he has learned that this bitter bread and shameful dress is also wholesome and warm...

    MMEm 10.422 27 Channing paints [war's] miseries, but does he know those of a worse war,-private animosities, pinching, bitter warfare of the human heart...

    MMEm 10.426 19 Number the waste places of the journey...the bitter dregs of the cup,-and all are sweetened by the purpose of Him I [Mary Moody Emerson] love.

    FSLC 11.181 23 The panic [over the Fugitive Slave Law] has paralyzed the journals...so that one cannot open a newspaper without being disgusted by new records of shame. I cannot read longer even the local good news. When I look down the columns at the titles of paragraphs...what bitter mockeries!

    FSLC 11.202 9 I will not pursue [Webster's] bitter history.

    TPar 11.289 3 ...it was complained that [Theodore Parker] was bitter and harsh...

    TPar 11.290 15 Two days, bitter in the memory of Boston, the days of the rendition of Sims and Burns, made the occasion of [Theodore Parker's] most remarkable discourses.

bitterer, adj. (2)

    MMEm 10.415 25 This morning rich in existence; the remembrance...of bitterer days of youth and age...

    EWI 11.118 13 ...experience...shows the existence, beside the covetousness, of a bitterer element [in slavery], the love of power...

bitterest, adj. (2)

    GSt 10.504 10 [George Stearns's] examination before the United States Senate Committee on the Harper's Ferry Invasion...is a chapter well worth reading, as a shining example of the manner in which a truth-speaker... extorts at last a reluctant homage from the bitterest adversaries.

    Trag 12.406 21 The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny;...

bitterly, adv. (2)

    Ill 6.313 8 It was wittily if somewhat bitterly said by D'Alembert, qu'un etat de vapeur etait un etat tres facheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses comme elles sont.

    MMEm 10.417 16 ...Malden [alluding to the sale of her farm]. Last night I [Mary Moody Emerson] spoke two sentences about that foolish place, which I most bitterly lament...

bittern, n. (3)

    Exp 3.63 24 ...hawk and snipe and bittern...have no more root in the deep world than man...

    SHC 11.435 25 Our use [of Sleepy Hollow] will not displace the old tenants. The well-beloved birds will not sing one song the less...red-eyed warbler, the heron, the bittern, will find out the hospitality and protection from the gun of this asylum...

    CL 12.162 10 [Is it not an eminent convenience to have in your town a person who knows]...where trout, woodcocks, wild bees, pigeons, where the bittern (stake-driver) can be seen and heard...

bitterness, n. (10)

    DSA 1.143 6 I have heard a devout person...say in bitterness of heart, On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church.

    Comp 2.124 3 The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases.

    Prd1 2.239 11 ...neither should you put yourself in a false position with your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness.

    Hsm1 2.254 21 It seems not worth [the hero's] while to...denounce with bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking...

    SwM 4.131 5 Beauty is disgraced, love is unlovely, when truth...is denied, as much as when a bitterness in men of talent leads to satire...

    MoS 4.154 12 With a little more bitterness, the cynic moans;...

    NMW 4.243 21 In a moment of bitterness [Napoleon] said to one of his oldest friends, Men deserve the contempt with which they inspire me.

    NMW 4.258 23 As long as our civilization is essentially one of property...it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter...

    Ctr 6.136 18 The causes to which we have sacrificed...would show like roots of bitterness...

    WSL 12.339 15 A less pardonable eccentricity [in Landor] is the cold and gratuitous obtrusion of licentious images, not so much the suggestion of merriment as of bitterness.

bitter-sweet, adj. (1)

    Grts 8.303 13 ...what a bitter-sweet sensation when we have gone to pour out our acknowledgment of a man's nobleness, and found him quite indifferent to our good opinion!

bitumen, n. (3)

    UGM 4.24 25 Not one [person] has a misgiving of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought that made things cohere with this bitumen, fastest of cements?

    Wsp 6.202 26 The whole creation is made of hooks and eyes, of bitumen...

    Mem 12.90 3 Memory is...the cement, the bitumen, the matrix in which the other faculties are embedded;...

bivouac, n. (2)

    SR 2.87 2 ...Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac...

    Comc 8.166 30 A classification or nomenclature used by the scholar... confessedly...a bivouac for a night...becomes through indolence a barrack and a prison...

bivouacs, v. (1)

    WD 7.176 27 A general, said Bonaparte, always has troops enough, if he only knows how to employ those he has, and bivouacs with them.

blab, v. (1)

    SL 2.159 21 [A man] may be a solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion...and the want of due knowledge,--all blab.

blabs, v. (1)

    Nat2 3.185 16 ...when now and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play but blabs the secret;--how then?

black, adj. (47)

    MR 1.243 4 Let [the man with a strong bias to the contemplative life] learn...to relish the taste of fair water and black bread.

    SR 2.51 17 ...never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.

    Comp 2.91 1 The wings of Time are black and white/...

    Cir 2.321 16 People say sometimes, See what I have overcome;...see how completely I have triumphed over these black events.

    Cir 2.321 17 People say sometimes, See what I have overcome;...see how completely I have triumphed over these black events. Not if they still remind me of the black event.

    Exp 3.79 1 No man at last believes...that the crime in him is as black as in the felon.

    UGM 4.30 11 Children think they cannot live without their parents. But, long before they are aware of it, the black dot has appeared and the detachment has taken place.

    ET1 5.10 16 [Coleridge] took snuff freely, which presently soiled his cravat and neat black suit.

    ET3 5.39 20 In the manufacturing towns [of England], the fine soot or blacks...give white sheep the color of black sheep...

    ET11 5.176 10 In the same line of Warwick, the successor next but one to [Richard] Beauchamp was the stout earl of Henry VI. and Edward IV. Few esteemed themselves in the mode, whose heads were not adorned with the black ragged staff, his badge.

    F 6.9 21 Find the part which black eyes and which blue eyes play severally in the company.

    F 6.9 24 How shall a man...draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or his mother's life?

    Pow 6.58 9 ...if [the plus man] have the accidental advantage of personal ascendency,--which implies...merely the temperamental or taming eye of a soldier or a schoolmaster (which one has and one has not, as one has a black mustache and one a blond),--then quite easily...all his coadjutors and feeders will admit his right to absorb them.

    Wth 6.86 25 We may well call [coal] black diamonds.

    Wsp 6.209 3 In creeds never was such levity; witness...the rat and mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and black art.

    CbW 6.265 16 I know those miserable fellows...who see a black star always riding through the light and colored clouds in the sky overhead;...

    CbW 6.265 19 I know those miserable fellows...who see a black star always riding through the light and colored clouds in the sky overhead; waves of light pass over and hide it for a moment, but the black star keeps fast in the zenith.

    Ill 6.309 6 We traversed...the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern [Mammoth Cave] to the innermost recess which tourists visit...

    Ill 6.310 22 Some crystal specks in the black ceiling high overhead [in the Mammoth Cave], reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this magnificent effect.

    Civ 7.34 6 ...if there be...a country...where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman;...that country is...not civil, but barbarous;...

    Elo1 7.70 23 ...who does not remember in childhood some white or black or yellow Scheherezade, who, by that talent of telling endless feats of fairies and magicians and kings and queens, was more dear and wonderful to a circle of children than any orator in England or America is now?

    OA 7.332 12 The old President [John Adams] sat in a large stuffed arm-chair, dressed in a blue coat, black small-clothes, white stockings;...

    PPo 8.242 27 These legends [of Persian kings], with...the cohol, a cosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows are indelibly stained black, the bladder in which musk is brought, the down of the lip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash;...make the staple imagery of Persian odes.

    Dem1 10.25 9 [Animal Magnetism] becomes...a black art.

    HDC 11.64 15 The public charity seems to have been bestowed in a manner now obsolete [in Concord]. The town...being informed of the great present want of Thomas Pellit, gave order to Stephen Hosmer to deliver a town cow, of a black color, with a white face, unto said Pellit, for his present supply.

    EWI 11.103 4 For the negro...no right in the poor black woman that cherished him in her bosom...

    EWI 11.103 15 Very sad was the negro tradition, that the Great Spirit, in the beginning offered the black man, whom he loved better than the buckra, or white, his choice of two boxes...

    EWI 11.103 18 Very sad was the negro tradition, that the Great Spirit, in the beginning offered the black man, whom he loved better than the buckra, or white, his choice of two boxes, a big and a little one. The black man was greedy, and chose the largest.

    EWI 11.130 2 ...I see...poor black men of obscure employment as mariners, cooks or stewards, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of Massachusetts,-freeborn as we,-whom the slave-laws of the States of South Carolina and Georgia and Louisiana have arrested in the vessels in which they visited those ports...

    EWI 11.142 13 The recent testimonies...of Gurney, of Philippo, are very explicit on this point, the capacity and the success of the colored and the black population [in the West Indies]...

    EWI 11.143 27 If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races...the black man must serve, and be exterminated.

    EWI 11.144 2 If the black man is...not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve, and be exterminated.

    EWI 11.144 3 ...if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him...

    EWI 11.144 27 ...you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman;...

    EWI 11.145 3 I esteem the occasion of this jubilee [of emancipation in the West Indies] to be the proud discovery that the black race can contend with the white...

    FSLC 11.185 12 Because of this preoccupied mind, the whole wealth and power of Boston...are thrown into the scale of crime: and the poor black boy...on arriving here finds all this force employed to catch him.

    FSLC 11.200 5 ...it is cheering to behold what champions the emergency [of the Fugitive Slave Law] called to this poor black boy;...

    FSLC 11.200 22 The words of John Randolph, wiser than he knew, have been ringing ominously in all echoes for thirty years, words spoken in the heat of the Missouri debate. We do not govern the people of the North by our black slaves, but by their own white slaves.

    AKan 11.258 6 ...the governor and legislature should neither slumber nor sleep till they have found out how to send effectual aid and comfort to these poor farmers [in Kansas], or else should resign their seats to those who can. But first let them hang the halls of the state-house with black crape...

    ACiv 11.309 1 ...justice satisfies everybody,-white man, red man, yellow man and black man.

    EPro 11.320 4 [The Emancipation Proclamation] does not promise the redemption of the black race;...

    HCom 11.344 6 Scholars changed the black coat for the blue.

    FRep 11.541 21 The genius of the country has marked out our true policy,-opportunity. Opportunity...of personal power, and not less of wealth; doors wide open. If I could have it,-free trade with all the world without toll or custom-houses, invitation as we now make...to every race and skin, white men, red men, yellow men, black men;...

    CL 12.149 18 ...what countless uses [of the forest] that we know not! How an Indian helps himself with fibre of milkweed...or root of spruce, black or white, for strings;...

    CW 12.169 13 ...unto me not morn's magnificence/.../Hath such a soul, such divine influence,/ Such resurrection of the happy past,/ As is to me when I behold the morn/ Ope in such low, moist roadside, and beneath/ Peep the blue violets out of the black loam./

    Bost 12.184 9 [Howell] compares [Indian society] to the geologic phenomenon which the black soil of the Dhakkan offers,-the property, namely, of assimilating to itself every foreign substance introduced into its bosom.

    Bost 12.208 1 I know that this history [of Massachusetts] contains many black lines of cruel injustice;...

Black Hawk Indians, n. (1)

    Comc 8.165 9 The Society in London which had contributed their means to convert the savages, hoping doubtless to see the Keokuks, Black Hawks... converted into church-wardens and deacons at least, pestered the gallant rover [Capt. John Smith] with frequent solicitations...touching the conversion of the Indians...

Black Hawk War, n. (1)

    ALin 11.330 14 [Lincoln] was thoroughly American...a flatboatman, a captain in the Black Hawk War, a country lawyer...

Black, Joseph, n. (1)

    Nat2 3.184 1 The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy and Black is the same common sense which made the arrangements which now it discovers.

black, n. (5)

    Tran 1.355 5 ...the justice which is now claimed for the black...is for Beauty...

    PI 8.46 1 In society you have this figure [of rhyme]...in a funeral procession, where all wear black...

    EWI 11.117 5 In June, 1835, the Ministers, Lord Aberdeen and Sir George Grey, declared to the Parliament...that now for ten months...only one black [in the West Indies] had been hurt in 800,000 negroes...

    EWI 11.144 16 ...if you have man, black or white is an insignificance.

    FSLC 11.190 21 ...no reasonable person needs a quotation from Blackstone to convince him that white cannot be legislated to be black...

blackballed, v. (1)

    ET7 5.121 16 Whilst I was in London, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from Paris, in February, 1848. Many private friends called on him. His name was immediately proposed as an honorary member of the Athenaeum. M. Guizot was blackballed.

blackberries, n. (1)

    SMC 11.367 24 In McClellan's retreat in the Peninsula, in July, 1862, it is all our men can do to draw their feet out of the mud. We marched one mile through mud...a good deal of the way over my boots, and with short rations; on one day nothing but liver, blackberries, and pennyroyal tea.

blackboard, n. (1)

    ET9 5.145 25 France is, by its natural contrast, a kind of blackboard on which English character draws its own traits in chalk.

black-browed, adj. (1)

    Elo2 8.113 23 [Man] finds himself perhaps in the Senate, when the forest has cast out some wild, black-browed bantling to show the same energy in the crowd of officials which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills...

black-coats, n. (2)

    Clbs 7.246 17 The black-coats are good company only for black-coats;...

blacken, v. (1)

    LVB 11.92 6 We have inquired if this [rumored relocation of the Cherokees] be a gross misrepresentation from the party opposed to the government and anxious to blacken it with the people.

blackened, v. (1)

    ET8 5.135 25 Here [in England] was lately a cross-grained miser [Joseph Turner]...yet as true a worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever existed...and when he saw that the splendor of one of his pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his rival's that hung next it, secretly took a brush and blackened his own.

blacker, adj. (3)

    MR 1.232 14 ...the general system of our trade (apart from the blacker traits, which, I hope, are exceptions...) is a system of selfishness;...

    Tran 1.336 18 Afterwards, when Emilia charges him with the crime, Othello exclaims, You heard her say herself it was not I./ Emilia replies, The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil./

    CbW 6.255 9 ...Art lives and thrills in...mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.

blackest, adj. (1)

    Wsp 6.201 17 I dip my pen in the blackest ink...

black-faced, adj. (1)

    Art1 2.357 9 ...then is my eye opened to the eternal picture which nature paints in the street, with moving men and children...white-faced, black-faced...

Blackfriars' Theatre, Londo (1)

    ShP 4.205 5 It appears that from year to year [Shakespeare] owned a larger share of the Blackfriars' Theatre...

black-letter, adj. (2)

    Elo1 7.88 24 ...I read without surprise that the black-letter lawyers of the day sneered at [Lord Mansfield's] equitable decisions...

    SlHr 10.445 22 Nobody cared to speak of thoughts or aspirations to a black-letter lawyer [Samuel Hoar], who only studied to keep men out of prison...

blackmail, n. (2)

    Gts 3.161 27 This is...a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of blackmail.

    Insp 8.290 14 Some of us may remember, years ago, in the English journals, the petition, signed by Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens and other writers...against the license of the organ-grinders, who infested the streets near their houses, to levy on them blackmail.

Blackmore, Richard, n. (1)

    SL 2.154 15 Blackmore, Kotzebue or Pollok may endure for a night...

blacks, n. (6)

    ET3 5.39 19 In the manufacturing towns [of England], the fine soot or blacks darken the day...

    EWI 11.142 24 I have said that this event [emancipation in the West Indies] interests us because it came mainly from the concession of the whites; I add, that in part it is the earning of the blacks.

    EWI 11.143 11 Who cares for oppressing whites, or oppressed blacks, twenty centuries ago...

    ACiv 11.307 17 Now, [the Southern people's] interest is in keeping out white labor; then [after Emancipation], when they must pay wages, their interest will be...to get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, to invite Irish, German and American laborers.

    ACiv 11.308 23 What is so foolish as the terror lest the blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages?

    ACiv 11.308 26 What is so foolish as the terror lest the blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages? It is denying these that is the outrage, and makes the danger from the blacks.

blacks, v. (1)

    MoL 10.251 16 I asked the first [West Point] Cadet, Who makes your bed? I do. Who fetches your water? I do. Who blacks your shoes? I do.

blacksmith, n. (1)

    Schr 10.273 26 If [the scholar] is not kindling his torch or collecting oil...he cannot look a blacksmith in the eye;...

blacksmiths, n. (2)

    MoS 4.168 17 ...blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their speech;...

    RBur 11.442 24 ...Burns knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody.

Blackstone, William, n. (4)

    FSLC 11.190 14 ...the great jurists...Coke, Blackstone...do all affirm [the principle in law that immoral laws are void].

    FSLC 11.190 20 ...no reasonable person needs a quotation from Blackstone to convince him that white cannot be legislated to be black...

    FSLC 11.190 23 Blackstone admits the sovereignty antecedent to any positive precept, of the law of Nature...

    FSLN 11.227 2 ...Blackstone, Burlamaqui, Vattel...do all affirm [that an immoral law cannot be valid]...

Blackwood's Magazine, n. (1)

    ET1 5.15 26 [Carlyle] had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. Blackwood's was the sand magazine;...

bladder, n. (1)

    PPo 8.242 27 These legends [of Persian kings], with...the cohol, a cosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows are indelibly stained black, the bladder in which musk is brought, the down of the lip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash;...make the staple imagery of Persian odes.

blade, n. (8)

    LT 1.266 5 Here is a Damascus blade, such as you may search through nature in vain to parallel...

    SR 2.67 4 [Man] is ashamed before the blade of grass...

    NER 3.266 2 All the men in the world...cannot make...a blade of grass...

    ET5 5.89 8 At Rogers's mills, in Sheffield...I was told...that they make no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and in the thousand is good.

    QO 8.201 2 One leaf, one blade of grass, one meridian, does not resemble another.

    PPo 8.241 18 On the occasion of Solomon's marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents, appeared before his throne. Behind them all came the ant, with a blade of grass...

    Let 12.401 1 Full of love, talent and hope spring up the darlings of the muse among the Germans; some seven years later, and...they are like a soil which an enemy has sown with poison, that it will not bear a blade of grass.

    Let 12.402 20 In all the cases we have ever seen where people were supposed to suffer from too much wit, or, as men said, from a blade too sharp for the scabbard, it turned out that they had not wit enough.

blades, n. (1)

    Suc 7.284 4 ...Olaf, King of Norway, could run round his galley on the blades of the oars of the rowers when the ship was in motion;...

Blair, Hugh, n. (1)

    Elo2 8.117 27 A worthy gentleman...listening to the debates of the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk in Edinburgh...delighted with the talent shown by Dr. Hugh Blair, went to him and offered him one thousand pounds sterling if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public.

Blake, Robert, n. (1)

    ET4 5.68 25 ...[the English] know where their war-dogs lie. Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson and Wellington are not to be trifled with...

Blake, William, n. (4)

    PI 8.27 15 In some individuals this insight or second sight has an extraordinary reach which compels our wonder, as in Behmen, Swedenborg and William Blake the painter.

    PI 8.27 16 William Blake...writes thus...

    Insp 8.290 24 William Blake said, Natural objects always did and do weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me.

    Grts 8.317 8 William Blake the artist frankly says, I never knew a bad man in whom there was not something very good.

blame, n. (9)

    Comp 2.118 10 Blame is safer than praise.

    Exp 3.79 9 ...[the intellect] leaves out praise and blame and all weak emotions.

    MoS 4.167 25 [I seem to hear Montaigne say] Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon? So, at least, I...can shoot the gulf at last with decency. If there be anything farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine: let it lie at fate's and nature's door.

    F 6.24 4 'T is weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate.

    OA 7.315 13 ...the transparent good faith of [Josiah Quincy's] praise and blame...gave unusual interest to the College festival.

    SovE 10.191 21 Man is always throwing his praise or blame on events...

    FSLC 11.205 1 It is neither praise nor blame to say that [Webster] has no moral perception, no moral sentiment...

    ChiE 11.473 4 [Confucius's] rare perception appears in...his unerring insight,-putting always the blame of our misfortunes on ourselves;...

    AgMs 12.363 25 [Edmund Hosmer] had a good opinion of the [Agricultural] Surveyor, and acquitted him of any blame in the matter...

blame, v. (9)

    Fdsp 2.208 8 A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade.

    Ill 6.316 5 We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages.

    PPo 8.244 20 Our father Adam [says Hafiz] sold Paradise for two kernels of wheat; then blame me not, if I hold it dear at one grapestone.

    Aris 10.43 17 The petty arts which we blame in the half-great seem as odious to them also;...

    Aris 10.52 11 ...if the dressed and perfumed gentleman, who serves the people in no wise...go about to set ill examples and corrupt them, who shall blame them if they burn his barns...

    MMEm 10.409 2 It is so universal with all classes to avoid contact with me [writes Mary Moody Emerson] that I blame none.

    FSLC 11.193 16 Will you blame the ball for rebounding from the floor...

    FSLC 11.193 17 Will you...blame the air for rushing in where a vacuum is made...

    MLit 12.333 7 ...every fine genius teaches us how to blame himself.

blamed, v. (1)

    Comp 2.117 6 The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet...

blameless, adj. (4)

    NER 3.279 5 I suppose considerate observers, looking at the masses of men in their blameless and in their equivocal actions, will assent, that...the general purpose in the great number of persons is fidelity.

    Wth 6.85 6 [A man] is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless livelihood.

    SovE 10.184 24 The poor grub, in the hole of a tree, by yielding itself to Nature, goes blameless through its low part...

    TPar 11.292 25 ...amiable and blameless at home, feared abroad as the standard-bearer of liberty...[Theodore Parker] has gone down in early glory to his grave...

Blanc, Mont, Switzerland, n (1)

    Boks 7.213 20 [Men's] education is neglected; but the circulating library and the theatre, as well as...the tour to Mont Blanc...make such amends as they can.

Blanchard, Luther, n. (1)

    HDC 11.74 17 ...the British fired one or two shots up the river...then a single gun, the ball from which wounded Luther Blanchard and Jonas Brown...

Blanche, n. (2)

    Bhr 6.185 20 Nothing can be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better manners than she;...

    Bhr 6.185 22 ...the movements of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is sufficient for the moment...

bland, adj. (1)

    Fdsp 2.212 2 Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland.

Blandford, Marquis of [John (4)

    Boks 7.209 26 Among the distinguished company which attended the sale [of the Duke of Roxburgh's library] were the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, and the Duke of Marlborough, then Marquis of Blandford.

    Boks 7.210 2 The bid [for the Valdarfer Boccaccio] stood at five hundred guineas. A thousand guineas, said Earl Spencer. And ten, added the Marquis [of Blandford].

    Boks 7.210 7 ...the contest [for the Valdarfer Boccaccio] proceeded until the Marquis said, Two thousand pounds.

    Boks 7.210 17 ...Earl Spencer exclaimed, Two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds! An electric shock went through the assembly. And ten, quietly added the Marquis [of Blandford].

blandishments, n. (1)

    Elo1 7.73 2 ...[Homer] does not fail to arm Ulysses at first with this power of overcoming all opposition by the blandishments of speech.

blandly, adv. (1)

    FSLC 11.181 6 I met the smoothest of Episcopal Clergymen the other day, and allusion being made to Mr. Webster's treachery, he blandly replied, Why, do you know I think that the great action of his life.

blank, adj. (6)

    LT 1.267 24 To-day always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an uniform experience that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank to-days.

    Mrs1 3.147 5 ...As Heaven and Earth are fairer far/ Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs/ .../ So on our heels a fresh perfection treads/...

    Wth 6.93 22 Few men on the planet have more truly belonged to it. But [Columbus] was forced to leave much of his map blank.

    LLNE 10.351 17 ...it is not to be doubted but that in the reign of Attractive Industry all men will speak in blank verse.

    EzRy 10.384 11 Perhaps I cannot better illustrate this tendency [to believe in a particular providence] than by citing a record from the diary of the father of [Ezra Ripley's] predecessor...written in the blank leaves of the almanac for the year 1735.

    HDC 11.77 22 I have found within a few days, among some family papers, [William Emerson's] almanac of 1775, in a blank leaf of which he has written a narrative of the fight [battle of Concord];...

blank, n. (2)

    Nat 1.73 23 The ruin or the blank that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye.

    Elo2 8.127 3 If [some men] are to put a thing in proper shape, fit for the occasion and the audience, their mind is a blank.

blanket, n. (3)

    SA 8.80 24 I think Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invisible--woven for the king's garment--must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature. Such a one can well go in a blanket, if he would.

    Res 8.144 21 The hunter, the soldier, rolls himself in his blanket, and the falling snow...is his eider-down...

    Res 8.144 27 See how Nature keeps the lakes warm by tucking them up under a blanket of ice...

blankets, n. (4)

    HDC 11.79 18 For these men [in the Continental army] [Concord] was continually providing shoes, stockings, shirts, coats, blankets and beef.

    SMC 11.369 20 Another incident [reported by George Prescott]: A friend of Lieutenant Barrow complains that we did not treat his body with respect, inasmuch as we did not send it home. I think we were very fortunate to save it at all, for...we had to carry him and all our wounded nearly two miles in blankets.

    SMC 11.369 24 [George Prescott writes] We laid [Lieutenant Barrow] in two double blankets, and then sent off a long distance and got boards off a barn to make the best coffin we could...

    II 12.76 25 ...Number, Inspiration, Nature, Duty;-'t is very certain that these things have been hid as under towels and blankets, most part of our days...

blanks, n. (3)

    Wsp 6.226 8 Wherever work is done, victory is obtained. There is no chance, and no blanks.

    Boks 7.192 14 ...it happens in our experience that in this lottery [of books] there are at least fifty or a hundred blanks to a prize.

    OA 7.329 15 [The conchologist] labels shelves for classes, cells for species: all but a few are empty. But every year fills some blanks...

blank-verse, n. (1)

    PI 8.49 18 A right ode (however nearly it may adopt conventional metre, as the...heroic blank-verse...) will by any sprightliness be at once lifted out of conventionality...

blaspheme, v. (2)

    YA 1.390 17 We cannot give our life to the cause...of the pauper, as another is doing; but to one thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the sentiment and the work of that man...

    PI 8.63 17 There is something...the eminent scholars of England, historians and reviewers, romancers and poets included, might deny and blaspheme it,--which is setting us and them aside...and planting itself.

blasphemer, n. (3)

    DSA 1.140 24 In the street, what has [the poor preacher] to say to the bold village blasphemer?

    DSA 1.140 24 The village blasphemer sees fear in the face, form, and gait of the minister.

    NR 3.239 20 Jesus would absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.

blasphemes, v. (1)

    SwM 4.131 2 ...though aware that truth is not solitary nor is goodness solitary, but both must ever mix and marry, [Swedenborg] makes war on his mind...and, on all occasions, traduces and blasphemes it.

blasphemies, n. (1)

    ACri 12.288 14 ...some men swear with genius. I knew a poet in whose talent Nature carried this freak so far that his only graceful verses were pretty blasphemies.

blasphemous, adj. (2)

    MN 1.198 24 Statements of the infinite are usually felt to be unjust to the finite, and blasphemous.

    Wsp 6.207 2 The religion of the early English poets is anomalous, so devout and so blasphemous, in the same breath.

blast, n. (5)

    Mrs1 3.137 21 Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with blast and running...

    Pow 6.77 24 At West Point, Colonel Buford...pounded with a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon until he broke them off. He fired a piece of ordnance some hundred times in swift succession, until it burst. Now which stroke broke the trunnion? Every stroke. Which blast burst the piece? Every blast.

    DL 7.113 9 ...is there any calamity...that more invokes the best good will to remove it, than this?...to hear an endless chatter and blast;...

    HDC 11.59 13 ...[the red man] may fire a farm-house, or a village; but...in the first blast of [the white men's] trumpet we already hear the flourish of victory.

    TPar 11.284 5 ...Every word that [Parker] speaks has been fierily furnaced/ In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest/...

blast, v. (1)

    FSLC 11.210 7 Let [the United States] confront this mountain of poison [slavery],-bore, blast, excavate, pulverize, and shovel it once for all, down into the bottomless Pit.

blasted, adj. (1)

    SHC 11.435 1 Bleak sea-rocks and sea-downs and blasted heaths have their own beauty;...

blasted, v. (1)

    OS 2.282 2 A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they had been blasted with excess of light.

blasts, n. (1)

    MMEm 10.397 19 ...Nor me can Hope or Passion urge,/ Hearing as now the lofty dirge/ Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,/ Nature's funeral high and dim,-/ Sable pageantry of clouds,/ Mourning summer laid in shrouds./

blaze, n. (2)

    Ctr 6.152 22 ...I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo the street was in a blaze with scarlet umbrellas.

    Farm 7.145 24 Whilst all thus burns,--the universe in a blaze kindled from the torch of the sun,--it needs a perpetual tempering...to check the fury of the conflagration;...

blaze, v. (1)

    SwM 4.146 4 ...if [Swedenborg] staggered under the trance of delight, the more excellent is the spectacle he saw, the realities of being which beam and blaze through him...

blazes, v. (4)

    NR 3.229 9 ...[a personal influence] borrows all its size from the momentary estimation of the speakers: the Will-of-the-wisp...only blazes at one angle.

    PC 8.223 4 Nature is a fable whose moral blazes through it.

    PPo 8.262 26 In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found;/ Thine the star-pointing- roof, and the base on the ground:/ Is one half depicted with colors less bright?/ Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!/

    Imtl 8.323 9 The hearth blazes in the middle and a grateful heat is spread around...

blazing, adj. (2)

    EWI 11.147 18 The Intellect, with blazing eye, looking through history from the beginning onward, gazes on this blot [slavery] and it disappears.

    SHC 11.436 22 Our dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of immortality.

blazing, v. (4)

    LE 1.176 17 How mean to go blazing...in fashionable or political salons.

    Grts 8.317 12 Bret Harte has pleased himself with noting and recording the sudden virtue blazing in the wild reprobates of the ranches and mines of California.

    Chr2 10.113 24 Some poor soul beheld the Law blazing through such impediments as he had, and yielded himself to humility and joy. What was gained by being told that it was justification by faith?

    CW 12.169 6 ...unto me not morn's magnificence/.../Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls/ Of rich men, blazing hospitable light,/.../Hath such a soul, such divine influence,/ Such resurrection of the happy past,/ As is to me when I behold the morn/ Ope in such low, moist roadside, and beneath/ Peep the blue violets out of the black loam./

blazon, v. (3)

    Chr1 3.105 21 Care is taken that the greatly-destined shall slip up into life in the shade, with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch and blazon every new thought...

    MoS 4.173 7 [The wise skeptic] does not wish to...blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him.

    SovE 10.185 15 A thought is embosomed in a sentiment, and the attempt to detach and blazon the thought is like a show of cut flowers.

bleaching, v. (1)

    Prch 10.215 4 Ascending through just degrees/ To a consummate holiness,/ As angel blind to trespass done,/ And bleaching all souls like the sun./

bleak, adj. (8)

    LT 1.263 2 ...[persons] have the skill to make the world look bleak and inhospitable, or seem the nest of tenderness and joy.

    Exp 3.81 7 ...yet is the God the native of these bleak rocks.

    Nat2 3.169 6 There are days which occur in this climate...when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes...

    ET5 5.98 15 Man in England submits to be a product of political economy. On a bleak moor a mill is built...and men come in as water in a sluice-way...

    SHC 11.435 1 Bleak sea-rocks and sea-downs and blasted heaths have their own beauty;...

    RBur 11.441 26 What a love of Nature [in Burns], and, shall I say it? of middle-class Nature. Not like...Moore, in the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them,-bleak leagues of pasture and stubble...

bleakest, adj. (1)

    Con 1.308 18 I cannot occupy the bleakest crag of the White Hills or the Alleghany Range, but some man or corporation steps up to me to show me that it is his.

bleakness, n. (1)

    Mrs1 3.154 5 Are you...rich enough to make...even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and your house from the general bleakness and stoniness;...

blear-eyed, adj. (1)

    CL 12.154 23 Dr. Johnson said of the Scotch mountains, The appearance is that of matter...dismissed by Nature from her care. The poor blear-eyed doctor was no poet.

bleatings, n. (1)

    Dem1 10.28 10 The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste...unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.

bleed, v. (4)

    Hsm1 2.246 10 Let not soft nature so transformed be,/ And lose her gentler sexed humanity,/ to make me see my lord bleed. So, 't is well;/...

    Gts 3.161 12 Thou must bleed for me.

    MoS 4.168 12 Cut [Montaigne's] words, and they would bleed;...

    Clbs 7.234 11 We know beforehand that yonder man must think as we do. Has he not two hands,--two feet,--hair and nails? Does he not eat,--bleed,-- laugh,--cry?

bleeding, v. (1)

    SR 2.53 9 I wish [my life]...not to need diet and bleeding.

bleeds, v. (1)

    MN 1.220 9 A [New England] man was born...to suffer for the benefit of others like the noble rock-maple which all around our villages bleeds for the service of man.

bleibt, v. (1)

    MoS 4.153 18 [The men of the senses] hold that Luther had milk in him when he said, Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weiber, Gesang,/ Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang;/...

blemish, n. (2)

    SwM 4.99 1 ...it is easier to see the reflection of the great sphere in large globes, though defaced by some crack or blemish, than in drops of water...

    Scot 11.467 7 ...[Scott] had no insanity, or vice, or blemish.

blemishes, n. (1)

    Lov1 2.182 21 In the particular society of his mate [the lover] attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other...

blench, v. (1)

    Int 2.331 14 I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that.

blend, v. (7)

    DSA 1.137 5 The faith should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns...

    LE 1.175 25 Digest and correct the past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life.

    SR 2.80 6 ...the walls of the system blend to [unbalanced mind's] eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe;...

    Lov1 2.188 21 ...the warm loves and fears, that swept over us as clouds, must lose their finite character and blend with God, to attain their own perfection.

    Chr1 3.114 17 ...the mind requires...a force of character...which will rule animal and mineral virtues, and blend with the courses of sap, of rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents.

    Ill 6.324 8 Diogenes of Apollonia said that unless the atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend and act with one another.

    Milt1 12.276 11 Shall we say that in our admiration and joy in these wonderful poems [of Homer and Shakespeare] we have even a feeling of regret...that [the men]...were channels through which streams of thought flowed from a higher source, which they...did not blend with their own being?

blended, adj. (1)

    Art2 7.40 9 When we reflect on the pleasure we receive from a ship, a railroad, a dry-dock; or from a picture, a dramatic representation, a statue, a poem,--we find that these have not a quite simple, but a blended origin.

blended, v. (2)

    ET13 5.216 27 The Catholic Church, thrown on this toiling, serious people [of England], has made in fourteen centuries a massive system...at once domestical and stately. In the long time, it has blended with everything in heaven above and the earth beneath.

    Edc1 10.159 4 The beautiful nature of the world has here blended your happiness with your power.

blending, n. (1)

    Mrs1 3.139 27 [Society]...hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties;...

blending, v. (7)

    Nat 1.31 8 [This imagery] is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind.

    MN 1.217 10 ...[Love] is that in which the individual...is wrapped round with awe of the object, blending for the time that object with the real and only good...

    SL 2.135 3 Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to others any insight into his methods? If he could communicate that secret it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the daylight and the vital energy the power to stand and to go.

    Int 2.344 6 ...let [new doctrines] not go until their blessing be won, and after a short season...they will be...one more bright star...blending its light with all your day.

    ET4 5.66 10 The bronze monuments of crusaders lying cross-legged in the Temple Church at London...please by...an expression blending good-nature, valor and refinement...which is daily seen in the streets of London.

    EdAd 11.391 27 Is the age we live in unfriendly...to that blending of the affections with the poetic faculty which has distinguished the Religious Ages?

    PLT 12.45 26 A blending of these two-the intellectual perception of truth and the moral sentiment of right-is wisdom.

blends, v. (4)

    LT 1.268 16 ...this [conservative] class...blends itself with the brute forces of nature...

    ET4 5.50 14 A child blends in his face the faces of both parents...

    War 11.152 9 ...in the first dawnings of the religious sentiment, that blends itself with [savages'] passions...

    PLT 12.44 22 Affection blends, intellect disjoins subject and object.

bless, v. (6)

    DSA 1.144 10 All men bless and curse.

    ET13 5.224 22 Abroad with my wife, writes Pepys piously, the first time that ever I rode in my own coach; which do make my heart rejoice and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me, and continue it.

    Elo2 8.127 22 ...on going up the pulpit-stairs [Dr. Charles Chauncy] was informed that a little boy had fallen into Frog Pond on the Common and was drowned, and the doctor was requested to improve the sad occasion. The doctor was much distressed, and in his prayer he hesitated...he implored the Divine Being to--to--to bless to them all the boy that was this morning drowned in Frog Pond.

    QO 8.190 8 Each man of thought is surrounded by wiser men than he, if they cannot write as well. Cannot he and they combine? Cannot they...call their poem Beaumont and Fletcher, or the Theban Phalanx's? The city will for nine days or nine years make differences and sinister comparisons: there is a new and more excellent public that will bless the friends.

    LS 11.9 11 It was the custom for the master of the feast [Passover] to break the bread and to bless it...

    MAng1 12.232 7 Raphael said, I bless God I live in the times of Michael Angelo.

blessed, adj. (13)

    DSA 1.128 12 Of [the Christian church's] blessed words...you need not that I should speak.

    SR 2.79 2 To the persevering mortal, said Zoroaster, the blessed Immortals are swift.

    Cir 2.307 22 O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for [persons called high and worthy], they are not thou!

    Int 2.342 17 The circle of the green earth he [in whom the love of truth predominates] must measure with his shoes to find the man who can yield him truth. He shall then know that there is somewhat more blessed and great in hearing than in speaking.

    Ctr 6.162 4 Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse:--...Make him lose all his friends, and what is worse,/ Almost all ways to any better course;/ With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee,/ And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty./

    Insp 8.283 22 To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift.

    Imtl 8.351 3 Yama said [to Nachiketas], One thing is good, another is pleasant. Blessed is he who takes the good...

    SovE 10.195 6 The emphasis of that blessed doctrine [of Trust] lay in lowliness.

    SovE 10.197 5 I have not discovered, until this blessed ray flashed just now through my soul, that there dwelt any power in Nature that would relieve me of my load.

    EzRy 10.384 19 In March following [Joseph Emerson] notes: Had a safe and comfortable journey to York. But April 24th, we find: Shay overturned, with my wife and I in it, yet neither of us much hurt. Blessed be our gracious Preserver.

    LS 11.22 27 ...the Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men...that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows. This man lived and died true to this purpose; and now, with his blessed word and life before us, Christians must contend that it is a matter of vital importance,-really a duty, to commemorate him by a certain form [the Lord's Supper]...

    EWI 11.147 12 There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right;...

    FRep 11.533 3 Blessed is all that agitates the mass...

Blessed Soul, n. (1)

    ET14 5.254 23 ...having attempted to domesticate and dress the Blessed Soul itself in English broadcloth and gaiters, [the English] are tormented with fear that herein lurks a force that will sweep their system away.

Blessed Unity, n. (1)

    F 6.48 6 Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity...

blessed, v. (4)

    Fdsp 2.204 20 Can another be so blessed and we so pure that we can offer him tenderness?

    Cir 2.315 22 Blessed be nothing and The worse things are, the better they are are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.

    Clbs 7.229 21 Sancho Panza blessed the man who invented sleep.

    LS 11.9 12 It was the custom for the master of the feast [Passover] to break the bread and to bless it, using this formula...Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, who givest us the fruit of the vine...

blessedness, n. (1)

    Ctr 6.157 1 We four, wrote Neander to his sacred friends, will enjoy at Halle the inward blessedness of a civitas Dei...

blesses, v. (1)

    OS 2.289 5 ...[Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton] are poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes beholds again and blesses the things which it hath made.

blesseth, v. (1)

    MLit 12.321 21 ...[Shakespeare and Milton] are poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes beholdeth again and blesseth the things which it hath made.

blessing, n. (18)

    Hist 2.39 12 [Each man] shall...bring with him into humble cottages the blessing of the morning stars...

    Int 2.344 1 ...let [new doctrines] not go until their blessing be won...

    ET11 5.187 8 Politeness is...a gentle blessing to the age in which it grew.

    CbW 6.256 23 What is the benefit done by a good King Alfred...compared with the involuntary blessing wrought on nations by the selfish capitalists who built the Illinois...roads;...

    Bty 6.283 18 A deep man...believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal;...

    Cour 7.272 5 Courage of the soldier awakes the courage of woman. Florence Nightingale brings lint and the blessing of her shadow.

    Schr 10.262 17 Stung by this intellectual conscience, we go to measure our tasks as scholars...and our sadness is suddenly overshone by a sympathy of blessing.

    Plu 10.313 1 Plutarch thought truth...the goodliest blessing that God can give.

    EzRy 10.379 7 We love the venerable house/ Our fathers built to God:/ In Heaven are kept their grateful vows,/ Their dust endears the sod./ From humble tenements around/ Came up the pensive train,/ And in the church a blessing found/ That filled their homes again./

    EzRy 10.384 14 The minister [Joseph Emerson] writes against January 31st [1735]: Bought a shay for 27 pounds, 10 shillings. The Lord grant it may be a comfort and blessing to my family.

    MMEm 10.432 20 It was the privilege of certain boys to have [Mary Moody Emerson's] immeasurably high standard indicated to their childhood; a blessing which nothing else in education could supply.

    HDC 11.34 14 ...in these poor wigwams [the pilgrims] sing psalms, pray and praise their God, till they can provide them houses, which they could not ordinarily, till the earth, by the Lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feed them.

    HDC 11.68 25 ...it gives life and strength to every attempt to oppose [unconstitutional taxes], that not only the people of this, but the neighboring provinces are remarkably united in the important and interesting opposition, which, as it succeeded before, in some measure, by the blessing of heaven, so, we cannot but hope it will be attended with still greater success, in future.

    ACiv 11.298 7 ...who is this who tosses his empty head at this blessing in disguise...and calls labor vile...

    FRep 11.544 5 Such and so potent is this high method by which the Divine Providence sends the chiefest benefits under the mask of calamities, that I do not think we shall by any perverse ingenuity prevent the blessing.

    Bost 12.182 17 A blessing through the ages thus/ Shield all thy roofs and towers!/ GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US,/ Thou darling town of ours [Boston]1/

    ACri 12.299 22 ...the secret interior wits and hearts of men take note of [Carlyle's History of Frederick II], not the less surely. They have said nothing lately in praise of the air, or of fire, or of the blessing of love, and yet, I suppose, they are sensible of these...

    Let 12.402 1 ...where the divine nature and the artist is crushed...every other planet is better than the earth. Men deteriorate...with the wantonness of the tongue and with the anxiety for a livelihood the blessing of every year becomes a curse...

blessing, v. (5)

    MR 1.255 22 He who would help himself and others should...be...a continent, persisting, immovable person,-such as we have seen a few scattered up and down in time for the blessing of the world;...

    Mrs1 3.155 7 Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, [society] reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character.

    NER 3.270 2 A canine appetite for knowledge was generated...and this knowledge...never took the character of substantial, humane truth, blessing those whom it entered.

    MMEm 10.431 14 [Mary Moody Emerson] checks herself amid her passionate prayers for immediate communion with God;...I indulge the delight of sympathizing with great virtues,-blessing their Original...

    FRep 11.520 14 We feel toward [politicians] as the minister about the Cape Cod farm,-in the old time when the minister was still invited, in the spring, to make a prayer for the blessing of a piece of land,-the good pastor being brought to the spot, stopped short: No, this land does not want a prayer, this land wants manure.

blessings, n. (5)

    DSA 1.142 13 ...scarcely in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his kind.

    Chr1 3.103 6 If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he...has doubled his power to serve you, and ere you can rise up again will burden you with blessings.

    Wsp 6.199 20 [Fate] is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,/ Floods with blessings unawares./

    EWI 11.121 8 All those who are acquainted with the state of the island [Jamaica] know that our emancipated population are...as strongly sensible of the blessings of liberty, as any that we know of in any country.

    War 11.169 17 Whenever we see the doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may be assured it will...be...one which is looked upon as the asylum of the human race and has the tears and the blessings of mankind.

blest, adj. (1)

    ET6 5.108 19 The song of 1596 says, The wife of every Englishman is counted blest.

blest, n. (1)

    PPo 8.255 20 Once flees [the phoenix] upward, he will perch/ On Tuba's golden bough;/ His home is on that fruited arch/ Which cools the blest below.

blest, v. (1)

    MMEm 10.418 11 If ever I [Mary Moody Emerson] am blest with a social life, let the accent be grateful.

blew, v. (6)

    ET2 5.26 21 At last...the storm came, the winds blew...

    ET4 5.59 23 The wind blew off the land, the ship flew, burning in clear flame, out between the islets into the ocean, and there was the right end of King Hake.

    Pow 6.68 24 I remember a poor Malay cook on board a Liverpool packet, who, when the wind blew a gale, could not contain his joy;...

    OA 7.323 21 The humorous thief who drank a pot of beer at the gallows blew off the froth because he had heard it was unhealthy;...

    EWI 11.103 10 ...when [the negro] sank in the furrow, no wind of good fame blew over him...

    EWI 11.104 23 ...a good man or woman...once in a while saw these injuries [to West Indian slaves] and had the indiscretion to tell of them. The horrid story ran and flew; the winds blew it all over the world.

blight, n. (3)

    Nat 1.42 6 ...blight, rain, insects, sun, - [a farm] is a sacred emblem...

    Pow 6.60 12 A good tree that agrees with the soil will grow in spite of blight...

    PLT 12.24 21 What happens here in mankind is matched by what happens out there in the history of grass and wheat. This curious resemblance repeats, in the mental function, the...crossings, blight, parasites, and in short, all the accidents of the plant.

blighted, v. (1)

    HDC 11.55 16 The [Concord] river, at this period, seems to have caused some distress now by its overflow, now by its drought. A cold and wet summer blighted the corn;...

blights, v. (1)

    JBB 11.266 19 ...[John Brown] and his brave boys vowed-so might Heaven help and speed 'em-/ They would save those grand old prairies from the curse that blights the land;/...

blind, adj. (40)

    Nat 1.34 6 When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts if at all other times he is not blind and deaf;...

    Nat 1.77 11 The kingdom of man over nature...he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.

    AmS 1.109 23 Would we be blind?

    DSA 1.144 25 ...[men] love to be blind in public.

    LT 1.280 19 ...I own our virtue makes me ashamed;...so thin and blind...

    Prd1 2.238 19 Love is fabled to be blind...

    Cir 2.307 19 I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy.

    Exp 3.61 15 The coarse and frivolous have an instinct of superiority...and honor it in their blind capricious way with sincere homage.

    Pol1 3.219 12 Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters;...

    PPh 4.46 21 The progress is to accuracy, to skill, to truth, from blind force.

    MoS 4.177 8 We paint...Love and Fortune, blind;...

    ET18 5.304 12 [The English] mind is in a state of arrested development...a blind savant like Huber and Sanderson.

    F 6.13 19 [Conservatives] have been...born halt and blind...

    Wsp 6.204 26 There is always some religion, some hope and fear extended into the invisible,--from the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, up to the song of the Elders in the Apocalypse.

    Bty 6.289 14 We say love is blind...

    Bty 6.289 15 We say love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round his eyes. Blind: yes, because he does not see what he does not like;...

    Bty 6.289 20 ...the mythologists tell us that Vulcan was painted lame and Cupid blind, to call attention to the fact that one was all limbs, and the other all eyes.

    Ill 6.309 14 [In the Mammoth Cave] I...paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish;...

    OA 7.322 6 ...if the life be true and noble, we have quite another sort of seniors than the...dotards who are falsely old,--namely, the men...who appearing in any street, the people empty their houses to gaze at and obey them:...as blind old Dandolo, elected doge at eighty-four years...

    PI 8.59 21 [Odin] could make his enemies in battle blind or deaf...

    Comc 8.172 3 ...Timur...had a blind eye and a lame foot.

    QO 8.195 23 Hallam...is...able to appreciate poetry unless it becomes deep, being always blind and deaf to imaginative and analogy-loving souls...

    PC 8.216 8 The early names are too typical,-Homer, or blind man;...

    PC 8.230 18 Here you are set down, scholars and idealists...amidst fools and blind, to see the right done;...

    SovE 10.189 2 ...a sublime confidence is fed at the bottom of the heart that...in spite of malignity and blind self-interest...an eternal, beneficent necessity is always bringing things right;...

    Prch 10.215 3 Ascending through just degrees/ To a consummate holiness,/ As angel blind to trespass done,/ And bleaching all souls like the sun./

    Schr 10.259 6 For thought, and not praise,/ Thought is the wages/ For which I sell days,/ Will gladly sell ages,/ And willing grow old,/ Deaf and dumb, blind and cold/...

    MMEm 10.424 16 ...in the weary womb [of Time] are prolific numbers of the same sad hour, colored...by the prophecy of others, more dreary, blind and sickly.

    FSLC 11.190 4 I am surprised that lawyers can be so blind as to suffer the principles of Law to be discredited.

    JBS 11.281 16 ...our blind statesmen go up and down...hunting for the origin of this new heresy [abolition].

    Koss 11.398 20 [The sympathy of Americans] is not a blind wave;...

    PLT 12.61 15 ...the clear-headed thinker complains of souls led hither and thither by affections, which, alone, are blind guides and thriftless workmen...

    PLT 12.62 14 Knowledge is plainly to be preferred before power, as being that which guides and directs its blind force and impetus;...

    II 12.65 8 We have a certain blind wisdom...

    II 12.78 25 ...we must be openers of doors, and not a blind alley;...

    Mem 12.102 26 The poet, the philosopher, lamed, old, blind, sick, yet disputing the ground inch by inch against fortune, finds a strength against the wrecks and decays sometimes more invulnerable than the heyday of youth and talent.

    Milt1 12.278 27 We have offered no apology for expanding to such length our commentary on the character of John Milton; who, in old age, in solitude, in neglect, and blind, wrote Paradise Lost;...

    ACri 12.289 5 Burns took [the Devil] into compassion and expressed a blind wish for his reformation.

    ACri 12.295 7 My friend thinks the reason why the French mind is so shallow, and still to seek, running into vagaries and blind alleys, is because they do not read Shakspeare;...

    MLit 12.319 3 In Byron...[the subjective tendency] predominates; but in Byron it is blind...

blind, n. (4)

    LE 1.155 20 Eyes is [the scholar] to the blind;...

    ET4 5.62 17 It is a medical fact that the children of the blind see;...

    Chr2 10.118 6 The power that in other times inspired...the modern revivals, flies to the help of the deaf-mute and the blind...

    CPL 11.503 5 Think how indigent Nature must appear to the blind, the deaf, and the idiot.

blind, v. (2)

    UGM 4.18 20 It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the beholder.

    Aris 10.63 27 ...shame to the fop of learning and philosophy who suffers a vulgarity of speech and habit to blind him to the grosser vulgarity of pitiless selfishness...

blinded, v. (2)

    Pt1 3.33 10 The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man.

    PPh 4.65 21 ...in the Republic [Plato says],--By each of these disciplines a certain organ of the soul is both purified and reanimated which is blinded and buried by studies of another kind;...

blinders, n. (2)

    ET5 5.88 8 ...it must be owned [the English] are capable of larger views; but the indulgence...costs great crises, or accumulations of mental power. In common, the horse works best with blinders.

    PLT 12.51 12 The horse goes better with blinders...

blinding, v. (1)

    EPro 11.322 27 It is wonderful to see the unseasonable senility of what is called the Peace Party...blinding their eyes to the main feature of the war, namely, its inevitableness.

blindly, adv. (1)

    Con 1.303 6 We have all a certain intellection or presentiment of reform existing in the mind, which does not yet descend into the character, and those who throw themselves blindly on this lose themselves.

blind-man's-buff, n. [blindman's-buff,] (2)

    SR 2.54 17 A man must consider what a blind-man's-buff is this game of conformity.

    Dem1 10.19 14 ...I find...some play at blindman's-buff, when men as wise as Goethe talk mysteriously of the demonological.

blindness, n. (10)

    Nat 1.75 2 To our blindness, these [common] things seem unaffecting.

    LT 1.277 15 [The Reforms] mix the fire of the moral sentiment, with...the blindness that prefers some darling measure to justice and truth.

    Comp 2.95 10 The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success...

    OS 2.271 11 ...the blindness of the intellect begins when it would be something of itself.

    Pt1 3.18 20 In the old mythology...defects are ascribed to divine natures, as...blindness to Cupid, and the like,--to signify exuberances.

    Wsp 6.218 3 ...the cure of blindness...is love.

    OA 7.322 18 We still feel the force...of Galileo, of whose blindness Castelli said, The noblest eye is darkened that Nature ever made...

    EWI 11.147 1 I assure myself that this coldness and blindness [towards the negro] will pass away.

    MLit 12.334 13 He who doubts whether this age or this country can yield any contribution to the literature of the world only betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the human soul.

    WSL 12.338 5 Add to this proud blindness [of John Bull] the better quality of great downrightness in speaking the truth...

blindnesses, n. (1)

    Comp 2.106 5 How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires!

blink, v. (1)

    F 6.23 3 Nor can [man] blink the freewill.

Bliss, Daniel, n. (6)

    HDC 11.66 5 Mr. Whiting was succeeded in the pastoral office [in Concord] by Rev. Daniel Bliss...

    HDC 11.66 9 Mr. Bliss heard that great orator [George Whitefield] with delight...

    HDC 11.66 19 The charges seem to have been made by the lovers of order and moderation against Mr. [Daniel] Bliss, as a favorer of religious excitements.

    HDC 11.66 26 ...Mr. Bliss replied, In the prayer you speak of, Jesus Christ was acknowledged as the only Mediator between God and man;...

    HDC 11.67 12 ...Mr. [Daniel] Bliss replied...I...used the word Mediator in some differing light from that you have given it; but I confess I was soon uneasy that I had used the word, lest some would put a wrong meaning thereupon. The Council admonished Mr. Bliss of some improprieties of expression...

    HDC 11.67 16 In 1764, [George] Whitfield preached again at Concord, on Sunday afternoon; Mr. [Daniel] Bliss preached in the morning, and the Concord people thought their minister gave them the better sermon of the two.

Bliss, Emerson, Phebe, n. (1)

    EzRy 10.383 2 [Ezra Ripley] married, November 16, 1780, Mrs. Phebe (Bliss) Emerson...

bliss, n. (5)

    PI 8.26 16 Who has heard our hymn in the churches without accepting the truth,--As o'er our heads the seasons roll,/ And soothe with change of bliss the soul/?

    Plu 10.317 13 ...it was [Plutarch's] severe fate to flourish in those days of ignorance, which, 't is a favorable opinion to hope that the Almighty will sometime wink at; that our souls may be with these philosophers together in the same state of bliss.

    MMEm 10.403 14 My opinion, [Mary Moody Emerson] writes, [is]...that the fiery depths