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A Mind Does Not Receive Truth As A Chest Receives Jewels That Are Put Into It, But As The Stomach Takes Up Food Into The System. It Is No Longer Food, But Flesh, And Is Assimilated. The Appetite And The Power Of Digestion Measure Our Right To Knowledge. He Has It Who Can Use It. As Soon As Our Accumulation Overruns Our Invention Or Power To Use, The Evils Of Intellectual Gluttony Begin,— Congestion Of The Brain, Apoplexy And Strangulation.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A Mind Does Not

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A Mind Does Not Receive Truth As A Chest Receives Jewels That Are Put Into It, But As The Stomach Takes Up Food Into The System. It Is No Longer Food, But Flesh, And Is Assimilated. The Appetite And The Power Of Digestion Measure Our Right To Knowledge. He Has It Who Can Use It. As Soon As Our Accumulation Overruns Our Invention Or Power To Use, The Evils Of Intellectual Gluttony Begin,— Congestion Of The Brain, Apoplexy And Strangulation.

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I Admire Answers To Which No Answers Can Be Made.

The World Is His Who Can See Through Its Pretension. What Deafness, What Stone-blind Custom, What Overgrown Error You Behold, Is There Only By Sufferance,--by Your Sufferance. See It To Be A Lie, And You Have Already Dealt It Its Mortal Blow.

Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit.

Men Are What Their Mothers Made Them.

People That Seem So Glorious Are All Show; Underneath They Are Like Everyone Else.

Men Are Conservatives When They Are Least Vigorous, Or When They Are Most Luxurious. They Are Conservatives After Dinner, Or Before Taking Their Rest; When They Are Sick Or Aged. In The Morning, Or When Their Intellect Or Their Conscience Has Been Aroused, When They Hear Music, Or When They Read Poetry, They Are Radicals.

Every Thought Which Genius And Piety Throw Into The World Alters The World.

I Hate The Prostitution Of The Name Of Friendship To Signify Modish And Worldly Alliances.

The Walking Of Man Is Falling Forwards.

People Only See What They Are Prepared To See.

All Good Conversation, Manners, And Action Come From A Spontaneity Which Forgets Usages And Makes The Moment Great.

A Day For Toil, An Hour For Sport, But For A Friend Is Life Too Short.

The Wise Through Excess Of Wisdom Is Made A Fool.

Judicious Praise Is To Children What The Sun Is To Flowers. Christian Bovee A Little Praise Goes A Great Ways.

Great Men Are They Who See That Spiritual Is Stronger Than Any Material Force - That Thoughts Rule The World.

A Good Deal Of Our Politics Is Physiological.

Friendship Buys Friendship.

Knowledge Is When You Learn Something New Every Day. Wisdom Is When You Let Something Go Every Day.

I Am Grown By Sympathy A Little Eager And Sentimental, But Leave Me Alone, And I Should Relish Every Hour And What It Brought Me, The Pot-luck Of The Day, As Heartily As The Oldest Gossip In The Bar-room.

But, If We Explore The Literature Of Heroism, We Shall Quickly Come To Plutarch, Who Is Its Doctor And Historian. To Him We Owe The Brasidas, The Dion, The Epaminodas, The Scipio Of Old, And I Must Think We Are More Deeply Indebted To Him Than To All The Ancient Writers. Each Of His "lives" Is A Refutation To The Despondency And Cowardice Of Our Religious And Political Theorists. A Wild Courage, A Stoicism Not Of The Schools, But Of The Blood, Shines In Every Anecdote, And Had Given That Book Immense Fame.

Without Ambition One Starts Nothing. Without Work One Finishes Nothing. The Prize Will Not Be Sent To You. You Have To Win It. The Man Who Knows How Will Always Have A Job. The Man Who Also Knows Why Will Always Be His Boss. As To Methods There May Be A Million And Then Some, But Principles Are Few. The Man Who Grasps Principles Can Successfully Select His Own Methods. The Man Who Tries Methods, Ignoring Principles, Is Sure To Have Trouble.

So Shall We Come To Look At The World With New Eyes.

The Refining Influence Is The Study Of Art, Which Is The Science Of Beauty; And I Find That Every Man Values Every Scrap Of Knowledge In Art, Every Observation Of His Own In It, Every Hint He Has Caught From Another. For The Laws Of Beauty Are The Beauty Of Beauty, And Give The Mind The Same Or A Higher Joy Than The Sight Of It Gives The Senses. The Study Of Art Is Of High Value To The Growth Of The Intellect.

Books Are The Best Of Things, Well Used; Abused, Among The Worst...they Are For Nothing But To Inspire.

In Actions Of Enthusiasm, This Drawback Appears: But In Those Lower Activities, Which Have No Higher Aim Than To Make Us More Comfortable And More Cowardly, In Actions Of Cunning, Actions That Steal And Lie, Actions That Divorce The Speculative From The Practical Faculty, And Put A Ban On Reason And Sentiment, There Is Nothing Else But Drawback And Negation.

So Far As A Person Thinks; They Are Free.

Beware Of Too Much Good Staying In Your Hand. It Will Fast Corrupt And Worm Worms. Pay It Away Quickly In Some Sort.

The Poet Alone Knows Astronomy, Chemistry, Vegetation, And Animation, For He Does Not Stop At These Facts, But Employs Them As Signs. He Knows Why The Plain, Or Meadow Of Space, Was Strown With These Flowers We Call Suns, And Moons, And Stars; Why The Deep Is Adorned With Animals, With Men, And Gods; For, In Every Word He Speaks He Rides On Them As The Horses Of Thought.

Self-trust Is The First Secret Of Success.

Every Man Is A Quotation From All His Ancestors.

Homeopathy Is Insignificant As An Act Of Healing, But Of Great Value As Criticism On The Hygeia Or Medical Practice Of The Time.

I Have No Expectation That Any Man Will Read History Aright Who Thinks That What Was Done In A Remote Age, By Men Whose Names Have Resounded Far, Has Any Deeper Sense Than What He Is Doing Today.

All The Great Speakers Were Bad Speakers At First.

The Exceptional Life Depends Not On Working Harder, But On Different, Even Opposite, Actions From Habit And The Crowd.

The Dice Of God Are Always Loaded.

My Companion Assumes To Know My Mood And Habit Of Thought, And We Go On From Explanation To Explanation, Until All Is Said That Words Can, And We Leave Matters Just As They Were At First, Because Of That Vicious Assumption.

But Only That Soul Can Be My Friend Which I Encounter On The Line Of My Own March, That Soul To Which I Do Not Decline, And Which Does Not Decline Me, But, Native Of The Same Celestial Latitude, Repeats In Its Own All My Experience.

Silence Is A Solvent That Destroys Personality, And Gives Us Leave To Be Great And Universal.

Beside All The Moral Benefit Which We May Expect From The Farmer's Profession, When A Man Enters It Considerately, This Promised The Conquering Of The Soil, Plenty, And Beyond This, The Adorning Of The Country With Every Advantage And Ornament Which Labor, Ingenuity, And Affection For A Man's Home, Could Suggest.

The Sum Of Wisdom Is That Time Is Never Lost That Is Devoted To Work.

When We See A Soul Whose Acts Are All Regal, Graceful, And Pleasant As Roses, We Must Thank God That Such Things Can Be And Are.

He In Whom The Love Of Truth Predominates . . . Submits To The Inconvenience Of Suspense And Imperfect Opinion; But He Is A Candidate For Truth . . . And Respects The Highest Law Of His Being.

Cities Degrade Us By Magnifying Trifles.

O, When I Am Safe In My Sylvan Home, I Mock At The Pride Of Greece And Rome; And When I Am Stretch'd Beneath The Pines When The Evening Star So Holy Shines, I Laugh At The Lore And Pride Of Man, At The Sophist's Schools, And The Learned Clan; For What Are They All In Their High Conceit, When Man In The Bush With God May Meet?

One Must Be An Inventor To Read Well.

Creative Writers

He Who Is In Love Is Wise And Is Becoming Wiser, Sees Newly Every Time He Looks At The Object Beloved, Drawing From It With His Eyes And His Mind Those Virtues Which It Possesses.

We Love Force And We Care Very Little How It Is Exhibited.

Everything Is Beautiful Seen From The Point Of The Intellect, Or As Truth. But All Is Sour If Seen As Experience.

The True Preacher Can Be Known By This, That He Deals Out To The People His Life,--life Passed Through The Fire Of Thought.

No Facts To Me Are Sacred; None Are Profane.

The Eye Is The First Circle; The Horizon Which It Forms Is The Second; And Throughout Nature This Primary Figure Is Repeated Without End.

The Secret Of The World Is The Tie Between Person And Event. Person Makes Event And Event Person.

The Beautiful Laws Of Time And Space, Once Dislocated By Our Inaptitude, Are Holes And Dens. If The Hive Be Disturbed By Rash And Stupid Hands, Instead Of Honey, It Will Yield Us Bees.

When Nature Has Work To Be Done, She Creates A Genius To Do It.

Machinery Is Aggressive. The Weaver Becomes A Web, The Machinist A Machine. If You Do Not Use The Tools, They Use You. All Tools Are In One Sense Edge-tools, And Dangerous.

He Who Loves The Bristle Of Bayonets Only Sees In The Glitter What Beforehand He Feels In His Heart. It Is Avarice And Hatred; It Is That Quivering Lip, That Cold, Hating Eye, Which Built Magazines And Powder-houses.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It. Many Will Read The Book Before One Thinks Of Quoting A Passage. As Soon As He Has Done This, That Line Will Be Quoted East And West.

Treat Your Friend As A Spectacle.

I Have Been Told By Persons Of Experience In Matters Of Taste, That The Fashions Follow A Law Of Gradation, And Are Never Arbitrary. The New Mode Is Always Only A Step Onward In The Same Direction As The Last Mode; And A Cultivated Eye Is Prepared For And Predicts The New Fashion.

In Private Places, Among Sordid Objects, An Act Of Truth Or Heroism Seems At Once To Draw To Itself The Sky As Its Temple, The Sun As Its Cradle. Nature Stretches Out Her Arms To Embrace Man, Only Let His Thoughts Be Of Equal Greatness.

England Produces Under Favorable Conditions Of Ease And Culture The Finest Women In The World. And, As The Men Are Affectionate And True-hearted, The Women Inspire And Refine Them.

God Will Have Life To Be Real; We Will Be Damned, But It Shall Be Theatrical.

If I Have Lost Confidence In Myself, I Have The Universe Against Me.

Love Is The Bright Foreigner, The Foreign Self.

Astronomy Is A Cold, Desert Science, With All Its Pompous Figures,-depends A Little Too Much On The Glass-grinder, Too Little On The Mind. 't Is Of No Use To Show Us More Planets And Systems. We Know Already What Matter Is, And More Or Less Of It Does Not Signify.

The Civilized Man Has Built A Coach, But Has Lost The Use Of His Feet.

Love Is Like Wildflowers; It's Often Found In The Most Unlikely Places.

Every Man Is Not So Much A Workman In The World As He Is A Suggestion Of That He Should Be. Men Walk As Prophecies Of The Next Age.

Beauty Rests On Necessities.

Shall We Then Judge A Country By The Majority, Or By The Minority? By The Minority, Surely. 'tis Pedantry To Estimate Nations By The Census, Or By Square Miles Of Land, Or Other Than By Their Importance To The Mind Of The Time.

We Fancy Men Are Individuals; So Are Pumpkins; But Every Pumpkin In The Field Goes Through Every Point Of Pumpkin History.

If A Man Will Kick A Fact Out Of The Window, When He Comes Back He Finds It Again In The Chimney Corner.

You See, It's All Clear, We Were Meant To Be Here From The Beginning.

Were Meant To Be

It Is The Last Lesson Of Modern Science, That The Highest Simplicity Of Structure Is Produced, Not By Few Elements, But By The Highest Complexity.

Immitation Is Suicide.

Every Spirit Builds Itself A House; And Beyond Its House, A World; And Beyond Its World A Heaven. Know Then, That The World Exists For You: Build, Therefore, Your Own World.

Thus Is Man Made Equal To Every Event. He Can Face Danger For The Right. A Poor, Tender, Painful Body, He Can Run Into Flame Or Bullets Or Pestilence, With Duty For His Guide.

For All Symbols Are Fluxional; All Language Is Vehicular And Transitive, And Is Good, As Ferries And Horses Are, For Conveyance, Not As Farms And Houses Are, For Homestead.

Coal Lay In Ledges Under The Ground Since The Flood, Until A Laborer With Pick And Windlass Brings It To The Surface. We May Well Call It Black Diamonds. Every Basket Is Power And Civilization. For Coal Is A Portable Climate.

The Socialism Of Our Day Has Done Good Service In Setting Men To Thinking How Certain Civilizing Benefits, Now Only Enjoyed By Theopulent, Can Be Enjoyed By All.

Before We Acquire Great Power We Must Acquire Wisdom To Use It Well.

I Know And See Too Well, When Not Voluntarily Blind, The Speedy Limits Opersons Called High And Worthy.

In The Woods We Return To Reason And Faith.

I Grieve That Grief Can Teach Me Nothing, Nor Carry Me One Step Into Real Nature.

There Is No True Orator Who Is Not A Hero.

I Like The Silent Church Before The Service Begins, Better Than Any Preaching.

The Leaves Are Falling, Falling As From Way Off, As Though Far Gardens Withered In The Skies; They Are Falling With Denying Gestures. And In The Nights The Heavy Earth Is Falling From All The Stars Down Into Loneliness. We All Are Falling. This Hand Falls. And Look At Others: It Is In Them All. And Yet There Is One Who Holds This Falling Endlessly Gently In His Hands.

Let A Stoic Open The Resources Of Man, And Tell Men They Are Not Leaning Willows, But Can And Must Detach Themselves; That With The Exercise Of Self-trust, New Powers Shall Appear.

When The Literary Class Betray A Destitution Of Faith, It Is Not Strange That Society Should Be Disheartened And Sensualized By Unbelief.

We Over-estimate The Conscience Of Our Friend. His Goodness Seems Better Than Our Goodness, His Nature Finer, His Temptations Less. Everything That Is His,--his Name, His Form, His Dress, Books, And Instruments,--fancy Enhances. Our Own Thought Sounds New And Larger From His Mouth.

Plant Your Dreams And Miracles Will Grow.

Who Shall Set A Limit To The Influence Of A Human Being?

The Modernness Of All Good Books Seems To Give Men An Existence As Wide As Man.

It Is Much Better To Learn The Elements Of Geology, Of Botany, Or Ornithology And Astronomy By Word Of Mouth From A Companion Than Dully From A Book.

Dreams And Beasts Are Two Keys By Which We Find Out The Keys Of Our Own Nature.

Most People, Who Have Quit Smoking, Have Had At Least One Unsuccessful Try In The Past. It Is Not Important How Many Times You Try To Quit. The Only Important Thing Is, That Eventually You Stay Quit

The Secret Of Education Lies In Respecting The Pupil. It Is Not For You To Choose What He Shall Know, What He Shall Do. It Is Chosen And Foreordained And He Only Holds The Key To His Own Secret.

The Shows Of The Day, The Dewy Morning, The Rainbow, Mountains, Orchards In Blossom, Stars, Moonlight, Shadows In Still Water, Andthe Like, If Too Eagerly Hunted, Become Shows Merely, And Mock Us With Their Unreality.

An Orator Or Author Is Never Successful Till He Has Learned To Make His Words Smaller Than His Ideas.

Each Work Of Art Excludes The World, Concentrates Attention On Itself. For The Time It Is The Only Thing Worth Doing -to Do Just That; Be It A Sonnet, A Statue, A Landscape, An Outline Head Of Caesar, Or An Oration. Presently We Return To The Sight Of Another That Globes Itself Into A Whole As Did The First, For Example, A Beautiful Garden; And Nothing Seems Worth Doing In Life But Laying Out A Garden.

It Is Rare To Find A Man Who Believes In His Own Thoughts Or Speaks That Which He Is Created To Say. As Nothing Astonishes Men So Much As Common Sense And Plain Dealing, So Nothing Is More Rare In Any Man Than An Act Of His Own...feel Yourself, And Be Not Daunted By Things...the Light By Which We See This World Comes Out From The Soul Of The Observer.

For What Are They All In Their High Conceit, When Man In The Bush With God May Meet?

I Look On Sculpture As History. I Do Not Think The Apollo And The Jove Impossible In Flesh And Blood. Every Trait The Artist Recorded In Stone, He Had Seen In Life, And Better Than His Copy.

It Is The Dissenter, The Theorist, The Aspirant, Who Is Quitting This Ancient Domain To Embark On Seas Of Adventure, Who Engages Our Interest. Omitting Then For The Present All Notice Of The Stationary Class, We Shall Find That The Movement Party Divides Itself Into Two Classes, The Actors, And The Students.

So Use All That Is Called Fortune. Most Men Gamble With Her, And Gain All, And Lose All, As Her Wheel Rolls. But Do Thou Leave As Unlawful These Winnings, And Deal With Cause And Effect, The Chancellors Of God.

The Poisons Are Our Principal Medicines, Which Kill The Disease And Save The Life.

You Need Someone Who Can Inspire You To Be What You Know You Can Be

Talent Alone Cannot Make A Writer. There Must Be A Man Behind The Book; A Personality Which, By Birth And Quality, Is Pledged To The Doctrines There Set Forth, And Which Exists To See And State Things So, And Not Otherwise.

Why Should I Hasten To Solve Every Riddle Which Life Offers Me? I Am Well Assured That The Questioner, Who Brings Me So Many Problems, Will Bring Me The Answers Also, In Due Time.

I Please Myself With The Graces Of The Winter Scenery, And Believe That We Are As Much Touched By It As By The Genial Influences Of Summer.

Pretension May Sit Still, But Cannot Act. Pretension Never Feigned An Act Of Real Greatness. Pretension Never Wrote An Iliad, Nordrove Back Xerxes, Nor Christianized The World, Nor Abolished Slavery.

The Field Cannot Be Seen From Within The Field.

If The Stars Should Appear But One Night Every Thousand Years How Man Would Marvel And Stare.

When A Dog Is Chasing After You, Whistle For Him.

In Dealing With The State, We Ought To Remember That Its Institutions Are Not Aboriginal, Though They Existed Before We Were Born; That They Are Not Superior To The Citizen; That Every One Of Them Was Once The Act Of A Single Man; Every Law And Usage Was A Man's Expedient To Meet A Particular Case; That They All Are Imitable, All Alterable; We May Make As Good; We May Make Better.

Live Well, Learn Plenty, Laugh Often, Love Much.

The Language Of The Street Is Always Strong.

A Self-denial, No Less Austere Than The Saint's, Is Demanded Of The Scholar. He Must Worship Truth, And Forgo All Things For That,and Choose Defeat And Pain, So That His Treasure In Thought Is Thereby Augmented.

Announced By All The Trumpets Of The Sky, Arrives The Snow, And, Driving O'er The Fields, Seems Nowhere To Alight: The Whited Air Hides Hills And Woods, The River, And The Heaven, And Veils The Farmhouse At The Garden's End. The Sled And Traveller Stopped, The Courier's Feet Delayed, All Friends Shut Out, The Housemates Sit Around The Radiant Fireplace, Enclosed In A Tumultuous Privacy Of Storm.

With Consistency A Great Soul Has Simply Nothing To Do. He May As Well Concern Himself With His Shadow On The Wall.

Shallow Men Believe In Luck. Strong Men Believe In Cause And Effect.

Knowledge Is The Antidote To Fear. [especially As Fear Often Stands For False Evidence Appearing Real!]

Let Us, If We Must Have Great Actions, Make Our Own So. All Action Is Of Infinite Elasticity, And The Least Admits Of Being Inflated With Celestial Air, Until It Eclipses The Sun And Moon.

I Once Heard A Preacher Who Sorely Tempted Me To Go To Church No More.

Justice Satisfies Everybody, And Justice Alone.

He Cumbers Himself Never About Consequences, About Interests; He Gives An Independent, Genuine Verdict. You Must Court Him: He Does Not Court You. But The Man Is, As It Were, Clapped Into Jail By His Consciousness.

What Strength Belongs To Every Plant And Animal In Nature. The Tree Or The Brook Has No Duplicity, No Pretentiousness, No Show. It Is, With All Its Might And Main, What It Is, And Makes One And The Same Impression And Effect At All Times. All The Thoughts Of A Turtle Are Turtle's, And Of A Rabbit, Rabbit's. But A Man Is Broken And Dissipated By The Giddiness Of His Will; He Does Not Throw Himself Into His Judgments; His Genius Leads Him One Way But 't Is Likely His Trade Or Politics In Quite Another.

As To Methods, There May Be A Million And Then Some, But Principles Are Few. The Man Who Grasps Principles Can Successfully Select His Own Methods.

Any Extraordinary Degree Of Beauty In Man Or Woman Involves A Moral Charm.

I Think It Is The Best Of Humanity That Goes Out To Walk. In Happy Hours, I Think All Affairs May Be Wisely Postponed For Walking.

A Mind Might Ponder Its Thought For An Epoch, And Not Gain So Much Self-knowledge As The Passion Of Love Shall Teach In A Day.

Shakespeare Will Never Be Made By The Study Of Shakespeare.

Nobody Can Bring You Peace But Yourself.

We Live In Succession, In Division, In Parts, In Particles. Meantime Within Man Is The Soul Of The Whole; The Wise Silence; The Universal Beauty, To Which Every Part And Particle Is Equally Related, The Eternal One. And This Deep Power In Which We Exist And Whose Beatitude Is All Accessible To Us, Is Not Only Self-sufficing And Perfect In Every Hour, But The Act Of Seeing And The Thing Seen, The Seer And The Spectacle, The Subject And The Object, Are One. We See The World Piece By Piece, As The Sun, The Moon, The Animal, The Tree; But The Whole, Of Which These Are Shining Parts, Is The Soul.

Greatness Once And Forever Has Down With Opinion.

Nothing Will Supply The Want Of Sunshine To Peaches, And, To Make Knowledge Valuable, You Must Have The Cheerfulness Of Wisdom. Whenever You Are Sincerely Pleased You Are Nourished. The Joy Of The Spirit Indicates Its Strength. All Healthy, Things Are Sweet-tempered. Genius Works In Sport, And Goodness Smiles To The Last.

On Bravely Through The Sunshine And The Showers! Time Hath His Work To Do, And We Have Ours.

To Fill The Hour──that Is Happiness.

Time Management

Conservatism Is Affluent And Openhanded, But There Is A Cunning Juggle In Riches. I Observe That They Take Somewhat For Everythingthey Give. I Look Bigger, But Am Less; I Have More Clothes, But Am Nit So Warm; More Armor, But Less Courage; More Books, But Less Wit.

Power Ceases In The Instant Of Repose; It Resides In The Moment Of Transition From A Past To A New State, In The Shooting Of The Gulf, In The Darting To An Aim.

An Action Is The Perfection And Publication Of Thought. A Right Action Seems To Fill The Eye, And To Be Related To All Nature.

Every Ship Is A Romantic Object, Except That We Sail In. Embark, And The Romance Quits Our Vessel, And Hangs On Every Other Sail In The Horizon.

The Eye Is Easily Frightened.

Our Friends Early Appear To Us As Representatives Of Certain Ideas, Which They Never Pass Or Exceed. They Stand On The Brink Of The Ocean Of Thought And Power, But They Never Take A Single Step That Would Bring Them There.

A Man's Personal Defects Will Commonly Have With The Rest Of The World Precisely That Importance Which They Have To Himself. If He Makes Light Of Them, So Will Other Men.

A Foolish Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Adored By Little Statesmen And Philosophers And Divines.

The Most Attractive Class Of People Are Those Who Are Powerful Obliquely, And Not By The Direct Stroke: Men Of Genius, But Not Yetaccredited: One Gets The Cheer Of Their Light, Without Paying Too Great A Tax.

The Divine Gift Is Ever The Instant Life, Which Receives And Uses And Creates, And Can Well Bury The Old In The Omnipotency With Which Nature Decomposes All Her Harvest For Recomposition.

Up And Away For Life! Be Fleet!- The Frost-king Ties My Fumbling Feet, Sings In My Ears, My Hands Are Stones, Curdles The Blood To The Marble Bones, Tugs At The Heart-strings, Numbs The Sense, And Hems In Life With Narrowing Fence. Well, In This Broad Bed Lie And Sleep,- The Punctual Stars Will Vigil Keep,- Embalmed By Purifying Cold; The Winds Shall Sing Their Dead-march Old, The Snow Is No Ignoble Shroud, The Moon Thy Mourner, And The Cloud.

Society Is A Masked Ball, Where Every One Hides His Real Character, And Reveals It By Hiding.

Valor Consists In The Power Of Self-recovery, So That A Man Cannot Have His Flank Turned, Cannot Be Out-generalled, But Put Him Where You Will, He Stands.

The Soul Comes From Without Into The Human Body, As Into A Temporary Abode, And It Goes Out Of It Anew It Passes Into Other Habitations, For The Soul Is Immortal.

A Sect Or Party Is An Elegant Incognito Devised To Save A Man From The Vexation Of Thinking.

It Is An Esoteric Doctrine Of Society, That A Little Wickedness Is Good To Make Muscle; As If Conscience Were Not Good For Hands And Legs.

A Cultivated Man, Wise To Know And Bold To Perform, Is The End To Which Nature Works.

He Who Is Not Everyday Conquering Some Fear Has Not Learned The Secret Of Life.

Many Times The Reading Of A Book Has Made The Future Of A Man.

The Heroic Cannot Be The Common, Nor The Common The Heroic.

Every Mind Must Make Its Choice Between Truth And Repose. It Cannot Have Both.

The Richest Of All Lords Is Use, And Ruddy Health The Loftiest Muse. Live In The Sunshine, Swim The Sea, Drink The Wild Air's Salubrity.

So All That Is Said Of The Wise Man By Stoic Or Oriental Or Modern Essayist, Describes To Each Reader His Own Idea, Describes His Unattained But Attainable Self.

The Most Tedious Of All Discourses Are On The Subject Of The Supreme Being.

Every Man Has A Vocation. The Talent Is The Call.

Man Begins Life Helpless. The Babe Is In Paroxysms Of Fear The Moment Its Nurse Leaves It Alone, And It Comes So Slowly To Any Power Of Self-protection That Mothers Say The Salvation Of The Life And Health Of A Young Child Is A Perpetual Miracle.

Give A Boy Address And Accomplishments And You Give Him The Mastery Of Palaces And Fortunes Where He Goes.

Fear Is Cruel And Mean. The Political Reigns Of Terror Have Been Reigns Of Madness And Malignity,--a Total Perversion Of Opinion;society Is Upside Down, And Its Best Men Are Thought Too Bad To Live.

We Do Not Yet Possess Ourselves, And We Know At The Same Time That We Are Much More.

A Great Part Of Courage Is The Courage Of Having Done The Thing Before.

Is It So Bad, Then, To Be Misunderstood? Pythagoras Was Misunderstood, And Socrates, And Jesus, And Luther, And Copernicus, And Galileo, And Newton, And Every Pure And Wise Spirit That Ever Took Flesh. To Be Great Is To Be Misunderstood.

To Say Then, The Majority Are Wicked, Means No Malice, No Bad Heart In The Observer, But, Simply That The Majority Are Unripe, Andhave Not Yet Come To Themselves, Do Not Yet Know Their Opinion.

A Man Must Thank His Defects, And Stand In Some Terror Of His Talents. A Transcendent Talent Draws So Largely On His Forces As Tolame Him; A Defect Pays Him Revenues On The Other Side.

Nature And Books Belong To The Eyes That See Them.

Our Moods Do Not Believe In Each Other.

And Yet--it Is Not Beauty That Inspires The Deepest Passion. Beauty Without Grace Is The Hook Without The Bait. Beauty, Without Expression, Tires.

Must We Always Talk For Victory, And Never Once For Truth, For Comfort, And Joy?

Comfort And Joy

The Street Is Full Of Humiliations To The Proud.

How We Hate This Solemn Ego That Accompanies The Learned, Like A Double, Wherever He Goes.

Coffee Is Good For Talent, But Genius Wants Prayer.

In The Moment When You Make The Least Petition To God, Though It Be But A Silent Wish That He May Approve You, Or Add One Moment To Your Life,--do You Not, In The Very Act, Necessarily Exclude All Other Beings From Your Thought? In That Act, The Soul Stands Alone With God, And Jesus Is No More Present To Your Mind Than Your Brother Or Your Child.

Wherever There Is Power There Is Age.

All Our Progress Is An Unfolding, Like The Vegetable Bud. You Have First An Instinct, Then An Opinion, Then A Knowledge, As The Plant Has Root, Bud, And Fruit. Trust The Instinct To The End, Though You Can Render No Reason. It Is Vain To Hurry It. By Trusting It To The End It Shall Ripen Into Truth, And You Shall Know Why You Believe.

Genius Is Power, Talent Is Applicability.

The Course Of Everything Goes To Teach Us Faith.

Success In Your Work, The Finding A Better Method, The Better Understanding That Insures The Better Performing Is Hat And Coat, Is Food And Wine, Is Fire And Horse And Health And Holiday. At Least, I Find That Any Success In My Work Has The Effect On My Spirits Of All These.

The Walls Of Rude Minds Are Scrawled All Over With Facts, With Thoughts. They Shall One Day Bring A Lantern And Read The Inscriptions.

By His Machines Man Can Dive And Remain Under Water Like A Shark; Can Fly Like A Hawk In The Air; Can See Atoms Like A Gnat; Can See The System Of The Universe Of Uriel, The Angel Of The Sun; Can Carry Whatever Loads A Ton Of Coal Can Lift; Can Knock Down Cities With His Fist Of Gunpowder; Can Recover The History Of His Race By The Medals Which The Deluge, And Every Creature, Civil Or Savage Or Brute, Has Involuntarily Dropped Of Its Existence; And Divine The Future Possibility Of The Planet And Its Inhabitants By His Perception Of Laws Of Nature.

My Gentleman Gives The Law Where He Is; He Will Outpray Saints In Chapel, Outgeneral Veterans In The Field, And Outshine All Courtesy In The Hall. He Is Good Company For Pirates, And Good With Academicians; So That It Is Useless To Fortify Yourself Against Him; He Has The Private Entrance To All Minds, And I Could As Easily Exclude Myself, As Him.

I Think No Virtue Goes With Size;the Reason Of All Cowardiceis, That Men Are Overgrown,and, To Be Valiant, Must Come Downto The Titmouse Dimension.

Make Youself Necessary To Someone.

When The Vain Speaker Has Sat Down, And The People Say 'what A Good Speech,' It Still Takes An Ounce To Balance An Ounce.

[w]e Pity Our Fathers For Dying Before Steam And Galvanism, Sulphuric Ether And Ocean Telegraphs, Photograph And Spectrograph Arrived, As Cheated Out Of Their Human Estate.

In Good Company, The Individuals Merge Their Egotism Into A Social Soul Exactly Co-extensive With The Several Consciousnesses There Present.

Explore, And Explore, And Explore. Be Neither Chided Nor Flattered Out Of Your Position Of Perpetual Inquiry. Neither Dogmatise Yourself, Nor Accept Another's Dogmatism. Why Should You Renounce Your Right To Traverse The Star-lit Deserts Of Truth, For The Premature Comforts Of An Acre, House, And Barn? Truth Also Has Its Roof, And Bed, And Board. Make Yourself Necessary To The World, And Mankind Will Give You Bread, And If Not Store Of It, Yet Such As Shall Not Take Away Your Property In All Men's Possessions, In All Men's Affections, In Art, In Nature, And In Hope.

We Are Made Aware That Magnitude Of Material Things Is Relative, And All Objects Shrink And Expand To Serve The Passion Of The Poet. Thus, In His Sonnets, The Lays Of Birds, The Scents And Dyes Of Flowers, He Finds To Be The Shadow Of His Beloved; Time, Which Keeps Her From Him, Is His Chest; The Suspicion She Has Awakened, Is Her Ornament

The Eye Is The Painter And The Ear The Singer.

Life Has No Memory. That Which Proceeds In Succession Might Be Remembered, But That Which Is Coexistent, Or Ejaculated From A Deeper Cause, As Yet Far From Being Conscious, Knows Not Its Own Tendency.

Then Climate Is A Great Impediment To Idle Persons; We Often Resolve To Give Up The Care Of The Weather, But Still We Regard The Clouds And The Rain.

If In The Least Particular, One Could Derange The Order Of Nature, Who Would Accept The Gift Of Life?

The Mystic Must Be Steadily Told,-all That You Say Is Just As True Without The Tedious Use Of That Symbol As With It. Let Us Have A Little Algebra, Instead Of This Trite Rhetoric,-universal Signs, Instead Of These Village Symbols,-and We Shall Both Be Gainers. The History Of Hierarchies Seems To Show That All Religious Error Consisted In Making The Symbol Too Stark And Solid, And Was At Last Nothing But An Excess Of The Organ Of Language.

The End Of Being Is To Know; And If You Say, The End Of Knowledge Is Action,-why, Yes, But The End Of That Action Again, Is Knowledge.

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