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Among The Lessons Taught By The French Revolution, There Is None Sadder Or More Striking Than This--that You May Make Everything Else Out Of The Passions Of Men Except A Political System That Will Work, And That There Is Nothing So Pitilessly And Unconsciously Cruel As Sincerity Formulated Into Dogma.

-James Russell Lowell

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Among The Lessons Taught

James Russell Lowell

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Among The Lessons Taught By The French Revolution, There Is None Sadder Or More Striking Than This--that You May Make Everything Else Out Of The Passions Of Men Except A Political System That Will Work, And That There Is Nothing So Pitilessly And Unconsciously Cruel As Sincerity Formulated Into Dogma.

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And But Two Ways Are Offered To Our Will, Toil With Rare Triumph, Ease With Safe Disgrace, The Problem Still For Us And All Of Human Race.

Not What We Give, But What We Share, For The Gift Without The Giver Is Bare.

That Love For One, From Which There Doth Not Spring Wide Love For All, Is But A Worthless Thing.

I Tell Ye Wut, My Judgment Is You're Pooty Sure To Fail, Ez Long 'z The Head Keeps Turnin' Back For Counsel To The The Tail.

What A Sense Of Security In An Old Book Which Time Has Criticized For Us!

He Gives Only The Worthless Gold Who Gives From A Sense Of Duty.

Earth Gets Its Price For What Earth Gives Us; The Beggar Is Taxed For A Corner To Die In, The Priest Hath His Fee Who Comes And Shrives Us, We Bargain For The Graves We Lie In; Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold... 't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away, 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking; There Is No Price Set On The Lavish Summer, And June May Be Had By The Poorest Comer.

The Victory's In Believing.

In General Those Who Nothing Have To Say Contrive To Spend The Longest Time In Doing It.

Two Meanings Have Our Lightest Fantasies,- One Of The Flesh, And Of The Spirit One.

Not Only Around Our Infancy Doth Heaven With All Its Splendors Lie; Daily, With Souls That Cringe And Plot, We Sinais Climb And Know It Not.

It Is Not The Insurrections Of Ignorance That Are Dangerous, But The Revolts Of The Intelligence.

Pride Of Origin, Whether High Or Low, Springs From The Same Principle In Human Nature; One Is But The Positive, The Other The Negative, Pole Of A Single Weakness.

Our American Republic Will Endure Only As Long As The Ideas Of The Men Who Founded It Continue Dominant.

Old Gold Has A Civilizing Virtue Which New Gold Must Grow Old To Be Capable Of Secreting.

Better To Me The Poor Mans Crust, Better The Blessing Of The Poor, Though I Turn Me Empty From His Door; That Is No True Alms Which The Hand Can Hold; He Gives Nothing But Worthless Gold Who Gives From A Sense Of Duty; But He Who Gives A Slender Mite, And Gives To That Which Is Out Of Sight, That Thread Of The All-sustaining Beauty Which Runs Through All And Doth All Unite, - The Hand Cannot Clasp The Whole Of His Alms, The Heart Outstretches Its Eager Palms, For A God Goes With It And Makes It Store To The Soul That Was Starving In Darkness Before.

Slow Are The Steps Of Freedom, But Her Feet Turn Never Backward.

Those Who Love Are But One Step From Heaven.

Endurance Is The Crowning Quality, And Patience All The Passion Of Great Hearts.

The Path Of Nature Is, Indeed, A Narrow One, And It Is Only The Immortals That Seek It, And, When They Find It, Do Not Find Themselves Cramped Therein.

This Goin' Ware Glory Waits Ye Haint One Agreeable Feetur.

Our Seasons Have No Fixed Returns, Without Our Will They Come And Go; At Noon Our Sudden Summer Burns, Ere Sunset All Is Snow.

The Time Is Ripe, And Rotten-ripe, For Change.

A Profound Common Sense Is The Best Genius For Statesmanship.

If The Devil Take A Less Hateful Shape To Us Than To Our Fathers, He Is As Busy With Us As With Them.

The Right To Be A Cussed Fool Is Safe From All Devices Human, It's Common (ez A Gin'i Rule) To Every Critter Born Of Woman.

Reputation Is Only A Candle, Of Wavering And Uncertain Flame, And Easily Blown Out, But It Is The Light By Which The World Looks For And Finds Merit.

Here Was A Type Of The True Elder Race, And One Of Plutarch's Men Talked With Us Face To Face.

All Birds During The Pairing Season Become More Or Less Sentimental, And Murmur Soft Nothings In A Tone Very Unlike The Grinding-organ Repetition And Loudness Of Their Habitual Song. The Crow Is Very Comical As A Lover; And To Hear Him Trying To Soften His Croak To The Proper Saint-preux Standard Has Something The Effect Of A Mississippi Boatman Quoting Tennyson.

Men! Whose Boast It Is That Ye Come Of Fathers Brave And Free, If There Breathe On Earth A Slave, Are Ye Truly Free And Brave?

There Is No Self-delusion More Fatal Than That Which Makes The Conscience Dreamy With The Anodyne Of Lofty Sentiments, While The Life Is Groveling And Sensual

And Blessed Are The Horny Hands Of Toil.

The Thing We Long For, That We Are For One Transcendent Moment.

Good Luck Is The Willing Handmaid Of Upright, Energetic Character, And Conscientious Observance Of Duty.

Thank God Every Morning When You Get Up That You Have Something To Do That Day, Which Must Be Done, Whether You Like It Or Not.

Be He Nowhere Else, God Is In All That Liberates And Lifts, In All That Humbles, Sweetens, And Consoles.

For There's Nothing We Read Of In Torture's Inventions, Like A Well-meaning Dunce, With The Best Of Intentions.

To Have Greatly Dreamed Precludes Low Ends.

A Man Is Old When He Can Pass An Apple Orchard And Not Remember The Stomachache.

I Would Hardly Change The Sorrowful Words Of The Poets For Their Glad Ones. Tears Dampen The Strings Of The Lyre, But They Grow The Tensor For It, And Ring Even The Clearer And More Ravishingly.

He Who Keeps His Faith Only, Cannot Be Discrowned.

It Was In Making Education Not Only Common To All, But In Some Sense Compulsory On All, That The Destiny Of The Free Republics Of America Was Practically Settled.

The Don Quixote Of One Generation May Live To Hear Himself Called The Savior Of Society By The Next.

One Thorn Of Experience Is Worth A Whole Wilderness Of Warning.

Life Seems A Jest Of Fate's Contriving.

Fate Loves Best Such Syllables As Are Sweet And Sonorous On The Tongue.

Nature, They Say, Doth Dote, And Cannot Make A Man Save On Some Worn-out Plan, Repeating Us By Rote.

Ez Fer War, I Call It Murder,- There You Hev It Plain An' Flat; I Don't Want To Go No Furder Than My Testyment Fer That. . . . . . An' You 've Gut To Git Up Airly Ef You Want To Take In God.

They Talk About Their Pilgrim Blood, Their Birthright High And Holy! A Mountain-stream That Ends In Mud Thinks Is Melancholy.

True Freedom Is To Share All The Chains Our Brothers Wear, And, With Heart And Hand, To Be Earnest To Make Others Free!

The True Ideal Is Not Opposed To The Real But Lies In It; And Blessed Are The Eyes That Find It.

A Poet Must Need Be Before His Own Age, To Be Even With Posterity

It ["the Ancient Mariner"] Is Marvellous In Its Mastery Over That Delightfully Fortuitous Inconsequence That Is The Adamantine Logic Of Dreamland.

His Heart Kep' Goin' Pity-pat, But Hern Went Pity-zekle.

Now On The Hills I Hear The Thunder Mutter... Nearer And Nearer Rolls The Thunder-clap, - You Can Hear The Quick Heart Of The Tempest Beat.... Look! Look! That Livid Flash! And Instantly Follows The Rattling Thunder, As If Some Cloud-crag, Split Asunder, Fell, Splintering With A Ruinous Crash, On The Earth, Which Crouches In Silence Under; And Now A Solid Gray Wall Of Rain Shuts Off The Landscape, Mile By Mile.

Laborin' Man An' Laborin' Woman Hev One Glory An' One Shame; Ev'y Thin' Thet' S Done Inhuman Injers All On 'em The Same.

Whatever You May Be Sure Of, Be Sure Of This, That You Are Dreadfully Like Other People.

In The Ocean Of Baseness, The Deeper We Get, The Easier The Sinking.

Though Old The Thought And Oft Exprest, Tis His At Last Who Says It Best.

The Fireflies O'er The Meadow In Pulses Come And Go.

The Course Of A Great Statesman Resembles That Of Navigable Rivers, Avoiding Immovable Obstacles With Noble Bends Of Concession, Seeking The Broad Levels Of Opinion On Which Men Soonest Settle And Longest Dwell, Following And Marking The Almost Imperceptible Slopes Of National Tendency, Yet Always Aiming At Direct Advances, Always Recruited From Sources Nearer Heaven, And Sometimes Bursting Open Paths Of Progress And Fruitful Human Commerce Through What Seem The Eternal Barriers Of Both.

Such Power There Is In Clear-eyed Self-restraint.

It Is Only The Intellect That Can Be Thoroughly And Hideously Wicked. It Can Forget Everything In The Attainment Of Its Ends. The Heart Recoils; In Its Retired Some Drops Of Childhood's Dew Still Linger, Defying Manhood's Fiery Noon.

Forget Everything

In Creating, The Only Hard Thing Is To Begin: A Grass Blade's No Easier To Make Than An Oak.

A Friendship Counting Nearly Forty Years Is The Finest Kind Of Shade-tree I Know.

A Woman's Love Is Mighty, But A Mother's Heart Is Weak, And By Its Weakness Overcomes.

The Sentimentalist Does Not Think Of What He Does So Much As Of What The World Will Think Of What He Does.

Literature, Properly So Called, Draws Its Sap From The Deep Soil Of Human Nature's Common And Everlasting Sympathies, The Gathered Leaf-mound Of Countless Generations, And Not From Any Top Dressing Capriciously Scattered Over The Surface.

If We See Light At The End Of The Tunnel, It's The Light Of The Oncoming Train.

Virtue Treads Paths That End Not In The Grave.

Moral Supremacy Is The Only One That Leaves Monuments, And Not Ruins, Behind It.

Truth Always Has A Bewitching Savor Of Newness In It, And Novelty At The First Taste Recalls That Original Sweetness To The Tongue; But Alas For Him Who Would Make The One A Substitute For The Other.

Evil Springs Up, And Flowers, And Bears No Seed, And Feeds The Green Earth With Its Swift Decay, Leaving It Richer For The Growth Of Truth.

Whenever You Have The Kind Of Market That Is Taking Shape Now - A Wildly Volatile One With Big Pricing Discrepancies - It Plays Right Into The Hands Of Managers Who Are Very Focused On Research And Stock Picking.

He Who Is Firmly Seated In Authority Soon Learns To Think Security, And Not Progress, The Highest Lesson In Statecraft.

It Is Right Precious To Behold The First Long Surf Of Climbing Light Flood All The Thirsty East With Gold.

There Is A Law Of Neutralization Of Forces, Which Hinders Bodies From Sinking Beyond A Certain Depth In The Sea; But In The Ocean Of Baseness, The Deeper We Get, The Easier The Sinking.

New Occasions Teach New Duties.

Onward And Upward

't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away; 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking.

As One Lamp Lights Another, Nor Grows Less,so Nobleness Enkindleth Nobleness.

That Cause Is Strong Which Has, Not A Multitude, But One Strong Man Behind It.

Once To Every Man And Nation, Comes The Moment To Decide, In The Strife Of Truth With Falsehood, For The Good Or Evil Side; Some Great Cause, Some Great Decision, Offering Each The Bloom Or Blight, And The Choice Goes By Forever, ’twixt That Darkness And That Light.

Once To Every Person And Nation Come The Moment To Decide. In The Conflict Of Truth With Falsehood, For The Good Or Evil Side.

There Is Something Solid And Doughty In The Man That Can Rise From Defeat, The Stuff Of Which Victories Are Made In Due Time, When We Are Able To Choose Our Position Better, And The Sun Is At Our Back.

Greatly Begin. Though Thou Have Time, But For A Line, Be That Sublime. Not Failure, But Low Aim Is Crime.

To Educate The Intelligence Is To Expand The Horizon Of Its Wants And Desires.

But Life Is Sweet, Though All That Makes It Sweet. Lessen Like Sound Of Friends Departing Feet; And Death Is Beautiful As Feet Of Friend. Coming With Welcome At Our Journey's End.

Silence Is Sorrow's Best Food.

The Greater Your Real Strength And Power, The Quieter It Will Be Exercised.

There Is No Better Ballast For Keeping The Mind Steady On Its Keel, And Saving It From All Risk Of Crankiness, Than Business.

My Gran'ther's Rule Was Safer 'n 't Is To Crow: Don't Never Prophesy - Onless Ye Know.

Tis Easy Now For The Heart To Be True As For Grass To Be Green Or Skies To Be Blue-- 'tis The Natural Way Of Living.

Fools, When Their Roof-tree Falls, Think It Doomsday.

To Genius Life Never Grows Commonplace.

Solitude Is As Needful To The Imagination As Society Is Wholesome For The Character.

Sorrow Is The Great Idealizer.

There Is Only One Thing Better Than Tradition And That Is The Original And Eternal Life Out Of Which All Tradition Takes Its Rise.

Let Us Be Of Good Cheer, However, Remembering That The Misfortunes Hardest To Bear Are Those Which Never Come.

But Better Far It Is To Speak One Simple Word, Which Now And Then Shall Waken Their Free Nature In The Weak And Friendless Sons Of Men.

An Angel Stood And Met My Gaze, Through The Low Doorway Of My Tent; The Tent Is Struck, The Vision Stays; I Only Know She Came And Went.

My Soul Is Not A Palace Of The Past.

In Vain We Call Old Notions Fudge, And Bend Our Conscience To Our Dealing; The Ten Commandments Will Not Budge, And Stealing Will Continue Stealing.

Fashion Being The Art Of Those Who Must Purchase Notice At Some Cheaper Rate Than That Of Being Beautiful, Loves To Do Rash And Extravagant Things. She Must Be Forever New, Or She Becomes Insipid.

Children Are God's Apostles, Sent Forth, Day By Day, To Preach Of Love, And Hope, And Peace.

The Secret Of Force In Writing Lies Not So Much In The Pedigree Of Nouns And Adjectives And Verbs, As In Having Something That You Believe In To Say, And Making The Parts Of Speech Vividly Conscious Of It.

All Thoughtful Men Are Solitary And Original In Themselves.

Most Men Make The Voyage Of Life As If They Carried Sealed Orders Which They Were Not To Open Till They Were Fairly In Mid-ocean.

May Is A Pious Fraud Of The Almanac A Ghastly Parody Of Real Spring Shaped Out Of Snow And Breathed With Eastern Wind.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof; It Is Temporary Expedient, Often Wise In Party Politics, Almost Sure To Be Unwise In Statesmanship.

When I Was A Beggarly Boy, And Lived In A Cellar Damp, I Had Not A Friend Nor A Toy, But I Had Aladdin's Lamp.

The Rich Man's Sons Inherits Cares; The Bank May Break, The Factory Burn, A Breath May Burst His Bubble Shares, And Soft, White Hands Could Hardly Earn A Living That Would Serve His Turn.

A Sneer Is The Weapon Of The Weak.

Winds Wanders, And Dews Drip Earthward; Rains Fall, Suns Rise And Set; Earth Whirls, And All But To Prosper A Poor Little Violet.

While Tenderness Of Feeling And Susceptibility To Generous Emotions Are Accidents Of Temperament, Goodness Is An Achievement Of The Will And A Quality Of The Life.

New Occasions Teach New Duties, Time Makes Ancient Good Uncouth; They Must Upward Still And Onward, Who Would Keep Abreast Of Truth.

Onward And Upward

But Civlyzation Doos Git Forrid Sometimes Upon A Powder-cart.

The Intellect Has Only One Failing, Which, To Be Sure, Is A Very Considerable One. It Has No Conscience.

I Have Always Been Of The Mind That In A Democracy Manners Are The Only Effective Weapons Against The Bowie-knife.

O Visionary World, Condition Strange, Where Naught Abiding Is But Only Change.

Whom The Heart Of Man Shuts Out, Sometimes The Heart Of God Takes In, And Fences Them All Round About With Silence Mid The Worlds Loud Din.

No Man Can Produce Great Things Who Is Not Thoroughly Sincere In Dealing With Himself, Who Would Not Exchange The Finest Show For The Poorest Reality, Who Does Not So Love His Work That He Is Not Only Glad To Give Himself For It, But Finds Rather A Gain Than A Sacrifice In The Surrender.

God Does Not Weigh Criminality In Our Scales. We Have One Absolute, With The Seal Of Authority Upon It; And With Us An Ounce Is An Ounce, And A Pound A Pound. God's Measure Is The Heart Of The Offender,--a Balance Which Varies With Every One Of Us, A Balance So Delicate That A Tear Cast In The Other Side May Make The Weight Of Error Kick The Beam.

Attention Is The Stuff That Memory Is Made Of, And Memory Is Accumulated Genius.

O Reputation! Dearer Far Than Life.

I Don't Believe In Princerple, But Oh I Du In Interest.

Console Yourself, Dear Man And Brother; Whatever You May Be Sure Of, Be Sure At Least Of This, That You Are Dreadfully Like Other People. Human Nature Has A Much Greater Genius For Sameness Than For Originality.

Earth's Biggest Country 's Gut Her Soul, An' Risen Up Earth's Greatest Nation.

Hush! Still As Death, The Tempest Holds His Breath As From A Sudden Will; The Rain Stops Short, But From The Eaves You See It Drop, And Hear It From The Leaves, All Is So Bodingly Still.

There Is Nothing So Desperately Monotonous As The Sea, And I No Longer Wonder At The Cruelty Of Pirates.

Who's Not Sat Tense Before His Own Heart's Curtain.

The Traitor To Humanity Is The Traitor Most Accursed; Man Is More Than Constitutions; Better Rot Beneath The Sod, Than Be True To Church And State While We Are Doubly False To God.

Borrowed Garments Never Keep One Warm.

Men's Thoughts And Opinions Are In A Great Degree Vassals Of Him Who Invents A New Phrase Or Re-applies An Old Epithet. The Thought Or Feeling A Thousand Times Repeated Becomes His At Last Who Utters It Best.

All The Beautiful Sentiments In The World Weigh Less Than A Single Lovely Action.

What Men Prize Most Is A Privilege, Even If It Be That Of Chief Mourner At A Funeral.

Where Church And State Are Habitually Associated, It Is Natural That Minds, Even Of A High Order, Should Unconsciously Come To Regard Religion As Only A Subtler Mode Of Police.

Nature Fits All Her Children With Something To Do, He Who Would Write And Can't Write, Can Surely Review.

It Is By Presence Of Mind In Untried Emergencies That The Native Metal Of Man Is Tested.

Presence Of Mind

All That Hath Been Majestical In Life Or Death, Since Time Began, Is Native In The Simple Heart Of All, The Angel Heat Of Man.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof.

As Life Runs On, The Road Grows Strange With Faces New - And Near The End. The Milestones Into Headstones Change, Neath Every One A Friend.

Truth Forever On The Scaffold, Wrong Forever On The Throne,- Yet That Scaffold Sways The Future, And, Behind The Dim Unknown, Standeth God Within The Shadow, Keeping Watch Above His Own.

A Great Man Is Made Up Of Qualities That Meet Or Make Great Occasions.

Some Kind Of Pace May Be Got Out Of The Eeriest Jade By The Near Prospect Of Oats; But The Thoroughbred Has The Spur In His Blood.

Many Make The Household But Only One The Home.

Taste Is The Next Gift To Genius.

Practical Application Is The Only Mordant Which Will Set Things In The Memory. Study Without It Is Gymnastics, And Not Work, Which Alone Will Get Intellectual Bread.

Worshippers Of Light Ancestral Make The Present Light A Crime.

[b]ut In Literature, It Should Be Remembered, A Thing Always Becomes His At Last Who Says It Best, And Thus Makes It His Own.

Tyrants Are But The Spawn Of Ignorance, Begotten By The Slaves They Trample On.

One Of The Things Particularly Admirable In The Public Utterances Of President Lincoln Is A Certain Tone Of Familiar Dignity, Which, While It Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Attainment Of Mere Style, Is Also No Doubtful Indication Of Personal Character. There Must Be Something Essentially Noble In An Elective Ruler Who Can Descend To The Level Of Confidential Ease Without Forfeiting Respect, Something Very Manly In One Who Can Break Through The Etiquette Of His Conventional Rank And Trust Himself To The Reason And Intelligence Of Those Who Have Elected Him.

It May Be Glorious To Write Thoughts That Shall Glad The Two Or Three High Souls, Like Those Far Stars That Come In Sight Once In A Century.

Some Day The Soft Ideal That We Wooed Confronts Us Fiercely, Foe-beset, Pursued, And Cries Reproachful: Was It Then My Praise, And Not Myself Was Loved? Prove Now Thy Truth; I Claim Of Thee The Promise Of Thy Youth.

If Youth Be A Defect, It Is One That We Outgrow Only Too Soon.

A Wise Skepticism Is The First Attribute Of A Good Critic.

The Question Of Common Sense Is Always: 'what Is It Good For?' - A Question Which Would Abolish The Rose And Be Answered Triumphantly By The Cabbage.

Ye Come And Go Incessant; We Remain Safe In The Hallowed Quiets Of The Past; Be Reverent, Ye Who Flit And Are Forgot, Of Faith So Nobly Realized As This.

Never Did Poesy Appear So Full Of Heaven To Me, As When I Saw How It Would Pierce Through Pride And Fear To The Lives Of Coarsest Men.

Life Is A Sheet Of Paper White / Whereon Each One Of Us May Write / His Word Or Two, And Then Comes Night.

Human Nature Has A Much Greater Genius For Sameness Than For Originality.

Wut 's Words To Them Whose Faith An' Truth On War's Red Techstone Rang True Metal; Who Ventered Life An' Love An' Youth For The Gret Prize O' Death In Battle?

The Child Is Not Mine As The First Was, I Cannot Sing It To Rest, I Cannot Lift It Up Fatherly And Bliss It Upon My Breast; Yet It Lies In My Little One's Cradle And Sits In My Little One's Chair, And The Light Of The Heaven She's Gone To Transfigures Its Golden Hair.

The Wisest Man Could Ask No More Of Fate Than To Be Simple, Modest, Manly, True, Safe From The Many, Honored By The Few; Nothing To Court In Church, Or World, Or State, But Inwardly In Secret To Be Great.

All Free Governments, Whatever Their Name, Are In Reality Governments By Public Opinion ; And It Is On The Quality Of This Public Opinion That Their Prosperity Depends. It Is, Therefore, Their First Duty To Purify The Element From Which They Draw The Breath Of Life.

The Holy Supper Is Kept, Indeed, In Whatso We Share With Anothers Need; Not What We Give, But What We Share, For The Gift Without The Giver Is Bare; Who Gives Himself With His Alms Feeds Three, Himself, His Hungering Neighbor, And Me.

The Greatest Homage We Can Pay To Truth, Is To Use It.

Democracy Is That Form Of Society, No Matter What Its Political Classification, In Which Every Man Has A Chance And Knows That He Has It.

Safe In The Hallowed Quiets Of The Past.

It Seems To Me That The Bane Of Our Country Is A Profession Of Faith Either With No Basis Of Real Belief, Or With No Proper Examination Of The Grounds On Which The Creed Is Supposed To Rest.

At The Devil's Booth Are All Things Sold. Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold.

Ef You Want Peace, The Thing You've Gut To Du Is Jes' To Show You're Up To Fightin', Tu.

There Is Something Magnificent In Having A Country To Love.

Large Charity Doth Never Soil, But Only Whitens Soft White Hands.

Who Speaks The Truth Stabs Falsehood To The Heart.

Communism Means Barbarism.

Christ Was The First True Democrat That Ever Breathed, As The Old Dramatist Dekkar Said He Was The First True Gentleman.

That Best Academy, A Mother's Knee.

Comparative Criticism Teaches Us That Moral And Aesthetic Defects Are More Nearly Related Than Is Commonly Supposed.

Reading Chaucer Is Like Brushing Through The Dewy Grass At Sunrise.

Men Have Their Intellectual Ancestry, And The Likeness Of Some One Of Them Is Forever Unexpectedly Flashing Out In The Features Of A Descendant, It May Be After A Gap Of Several Centuries. In The Parliament Of The Present Every Man Represents A Constituency Of The Past.

That Pernicious Sentiment, "our Country, Right Or Wrong."

I Love Her With A Love As Still As A Broad River's Peaceful Might, Which By High Tower And Lowly Mill, Goes Wandering At Its Own Will, And Yet Does Ever Flow Aright.

Books Are The Bees Which Carry The Quickening Pollen From One To Another Mind.

A Stray Hair, By Its Continued Irritation, May Give More Annoyance Than A Smart Blow.

The Soil Out Of Which Such Men As He Are Made Is Good To Be Born On, Good To Live On, Good To Die For And To Be Buried In.

Great Truths Are Portions Of The Soul Of Man; Great Souls Are Portions Of Eternity.

No Man, I Suspect, Ever Lived Long In The Country Without Being Bitten By These Meteorological Ambitions. He Likes To Be Hotter And Colder, To Have Been More Deeply Snowed Up, To Have More Trees And Larger Blown Down Than His Neighbors.

Nature, They Say, Doth Dote, And Cannot Make A Man Save On Some Worn-out Plan Repeating Us By Rote: For Him Her Old World Moulds Aside She Threw And, Choosing Sweet Clay From The Breast Of The Unexhausted West, With Stuff Untainted Shaped A Hero New.

The Riches Of Scholarship, The Benignities Of Literature, Defy Fortune And Outlive Calamity. They Are Beyond The Reach Of Thief Or Moth Or Rust. As They Cannot Be Inherited, So They Cannot, Be Alienated.

Light Is The Symbol Of Truth.

Spiritual Healing

Fortune Is The Rod Of The Weak, And The Staff Of The Brave.

Granting Our Wish Is One Of Fate's Saddest Jokes.

The Green Grass Floweth Like A Stream Into The Oceans's Blue.

The True Historical Genius, To Our Thinking, Is That Which Can See The Nobler Meaning Of Events That Are Near Him, As The True Poet Is He Who Detects The Divine In The Casual; And We Somewhat Suspect The Depth Of His Insight Into The Past Who Cannot Recognize The Godlike Of To-day Under That Disguise In Which It Always Visits Us.

If One Waits For The Right Time To Come Before Writing, The Right Time Never Comes.

It Is Quite Too Common A Practice, Both In Readers And The More Superficial Class Of Critics, To Judge A Book By What It Is Not, A Matter Much Easier To Determine Than What It Is.

I Don't Believe In Principle, But I Do In Interest.

Dear Common Flower, That Grow'st Beside The Way, Fringing The Dusty Road With Harmless Gold, First Pledge Of Blithesome May, Which Children Pluck, And, Full Of Pride Uphold.

Tyranny Is Always Weakness

Democracy Is Nothing More Than An Experiment In Government, More Likely To Succeed In A New Soil, But Likely To Be Tried In All Soils, Which Must Stand Or Fall On Its Own Merits As Others Have Done Before It. For There Is No Trick Of Perpetual Motion In Politics Any More Than In Mechanics.

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