Q 01/05

In Emerson's Nature, what does the speaker become while standing on bare ground in the woods?

A) A transparent eyeball

B) A hollow reed in the wind

C) A mirror of the sky

D) A leaf on the stream

Answer · why

A) A transparent eyeball

A transparent eyeball is Emerson's image for losing all egotism: he is nothing, sees all, and feels the currents of the Universal Being pass through h...

Q 02/05

Which famous phrase about the American Revolution comes from Emerson's 1837 Concord Hymn?

A) No taxation without representation

B) The shot heard round the world

C) Don't tread on me

D) Give me liberty or death

Answer · why

B) The shot heard round the world

The shot heard round the world comes from the hymn's first stanza, which was later inscribed beneath the Minute Man statue at Concord's North Bridge.

Q 03/05

Which writer read Nature in college and later built a cabin on woodland Emerson owned?

A) Nathaniel Hawthorne

B) Herman Melville

C) Henry David Thoreau

D) James Russell Lowell

Answer · why

C) Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau took the essay to heart at Harvard, and its ideas shaped the book he later wrote about his two years in that cabin.

Q 04/05

Emerson famously wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of what?

A) Anxious hearts

B) Idle hands

C) Small towns

D) Little minds

Answer · why

D) Little minds

Little minds cling to consistency, Emerson argued in 1841, and the full sentence adds that little statesmen, philosophers and divines adore it.

Q 05/05

In Emerson's Nature, which sight would people adore if seen only one night in a thousand years?

A) The full moon

B) The stars

C) A rainbow

D) The aurora

Answer · why

B) The stars

The stars come out every night, Emerson notes, yet if they appeared just once people would keep the memory of that city of God for generations.