继续文摘，只是没想到还是爱默生。。。
圆---拉尔夫.沃尔多.爱默生
眼睛是第一个圆，眼前的地平线是第二个圆。这个原始的形状在自然界到处都是，没有止境。圆是一种最高形式的象征。圣.奥古斯丁把圆作为对上帝本质的描述，它有着无所不在的圆心，但是其圆周围却无处寻觅。我们用一生的时间来研究这个最原始的图形有什么丰富内涵。在讨论人类每一个行为的循环及其补偿性时，我们从中探寻出了一种道德寓意。我们要研究的另一个类比是：没有什么行为不能够被超越。有这样一条真理贯穿在我们的生活当中，即：在任何一个圆的外围都可以画出另外一个圆；自然没有极限，每个终点都是一个新的起点；太阳爬到最高处时，总会有另一道曙光冉冉升起；深海处还有更深的海床。
这一事实象征着“无法触及”又不可捕捉、转眼即逝的“完美”，它鼓舞成功，同时又宣告失败，从这一点来说，它可以帮助我们把人类在各个方面显示出来的力量结合起来。
自然界的任何事物都不会是永恒不变的。宇宙是运动变化的。“永恒”只是一个表示不同程度的概念。在上帝的眼中，我们的星球是一则透明的法规，而不是事实的累积。事实因为融解在法规中而运转。我们的文化不过是一种占据支配地位的理念，它黏附着一套城市和机构。只要我们的理念转变了，它们就会随之消亡。古希腊的雕刻早已不复存在，像冰雕一样消逝，只剩下一些零星孤独的碎片，好似六七月间阴谷的石缝中零零散散的残雪。开辟新事物的天才又创造了别动东西。希腊字母流传得久远一些，但也同样避免不了要遭受厄运，最终掉进新思想为所有的旧思想设置的不可逆转的深渊里。新大陆在这个古老星球的废墟上建立；新物种在前代腐化的尸体上孕育；新艺术占据了旧艺术的地位。人们原来发明的导管柱头，由于后来出现的液压传动而成为废品；防御工事在火药面前脆弱得不堪一击；铁路的发明让公路和运河相形见绌；蒸汽机取代了船帆；随即电动机又应时而生。
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勇气在于有很强的自我重塑能力，只有这样，一个人才能永远立于不败之地，才能不受人摆布；不管你把他放在什么场合，他都有立足之地。要想做到这一点，他就必须选择真理，摈弃他对真理原有的理解，随时能够从不同的角度认识接受真理，而且要相信他的法律条文、他与社会之间的联系、他的宗教、他的世界随时都有可能被取代而消逝。
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忘我的境界是我们不断追求的，走出自得其乐的圈子，失去恒久的记忆，全身心地投入做某件事情，简单地说来，就是重新地画一个圆。没有做事时的狂热就不会有所成就。生活是精彩的，精彩来自于放弃。历史上的伟大时刻都是借助了强有力的思想得以展现的，比如天才和宗教工作。克伦威尔曾经说过：“当一个人不再受困于某个限定了的去向时，他就可以登峰造极。”也正因为这这样，陶醉沉迷、鸦片和酒精等酷似神仙的感觉，才会对人们构成致命的诱惑。同样的道理，人们要把狂热融合在比赛和战争中，以此来模拟心灵的热烈与宽宏大量。
Circle---Ralph Waldo Emerson
The eye is the first circle ; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department.
There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea; they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure of fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; ways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity.
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man can not have his flank turned, can not be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth, to his past apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease.
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The one thing which we seek which insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the work of genius and religion. "A man." said Oliver Cromwell,"never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.
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