Background Image

...

An Institution Is The Lengthened Shadow Of One Man; As, Monachism Of The Hermit Anthony, The Reformation Of Luther, Quakerism Of Fox, Methodism Of Wesley, Abolition Of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton Called "the Height Of Rome;" And All History Resolves Itself Easily Into The Biography Of A Few Stout And Earnest Persons. Let A Man, Then, Know His Worth, And Keep Things Under His Feet.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

An Institution Is The

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

An Institution Is The Lengthened Shadow Of One Man; As, Monachism Of The Hermit Anthony, The Reformation Of Luther, Quakerism Of Fox, Methodism Of Wesley, Abolition Of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton Called "the Height Of Rome;" And All History Resolves Itself Easily Into The Biography Of A Few Stout And Earnest Persons. Let A Man, Then, Know His Worth, And Keep Things Under His Feet.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

It Is Sublime To Think And Say Of Another, I Need Never Meet, Or Speak, Or Write To Him: We Need Not Reinforce Ourselves, Or Send Tokens Of Remembrance; I Rely On Him As On Myself: If He Did Thus And Thus, I Know It Was Right.

A Seashell Should Be The Crest Of England, Not Only Because It Represents A Power Built On The Waves, But Also The Hard Finish Ofthe Men. The Englishman Is Finished Like A Cowry Or A Murex.

When I Behold A Rich Landscape, It Is Less To My Purpose To Recite Correctly The Order And Superposition Of The Strata, Than To Know Why All Thought Of Multitude Is Lost In A Tranquil Sense Of Unity.

There Is No Event Greater In Life Than The Appearance Of New Persons About Our Hearth, Except It Be The Progress Of The Characterwhich Draws Them.

He Who Is In Love Is Wise And Is Becoming Wiser.

The Near Explains The Far. The Drop Is A Small Ocean. A Man Is Related To All Nature. This Perception Of The Worth Of The Vulgar Is Fruitful In Discoveries. Goethe, In This Very Thing The Most Modern Of The Moderns, Has Shown Us, As None Ever Did, The Genius Of The Ancients.

The "times," "the Age" What Is That, But A Few Profound Persons And A Few Active Persons Who Epitomize The Times?

Language Is Fossil Poetry.

All Infractions Of Love And Equity In Our Social Relations Are Speedily Punished-by Fear...be Honest With A Man And You Have No Fear. Try To Deceive And The Relationship Deteriorates.

Delicious Is A Just And Firm Encounter Of Two In A Thought, In A Feeling.

All The Great Speakers Were Bad Speakers At First.

The Spirit Only Can Teach. Not Any Profane Man, Not Any Sensual, Not Any Liar, Not Any Slave Can Teach, But Only He Can Give, Whohas; He Only Can Create, Who Is. The Man On Whom The Soul Descends, Through Whom The Soul Speaks, Alone Can Teach. Courage, Piety, Love, Wisdom, Can Teach; And Every Man Can Open His Door To These Angels, And They Shall Bring Him The Gift Of Tongues. But The Man Who Aims To Speak As Books Enable, As Synods Use, As The Fashion Guides, And As Interest Commands, Babbles. Let Him Hush.

Blessed Are Those Who Have No Talent!

Blessed Are Those

Wherever The Truth Is Injured, Defend It.

The Love Of Novels Is The Preference Of Sentiment To The Senses.

Pain Is Superficial, And Therefore Fear Is. The Torments Of Martyrdoms Are Probably Most Keenly Felt By The By-standers.

The Idiot, The Indian, The Child And Unschooled Farmer's Boy Stand Nearer To The Light By Which Nature Is To Be Read, Than The Dissector Or The Antiquary.

The Truth, The Hope, Of Any Time Must Be Sought In The Minorities. Michael Angelo Was The Conscience Of Italy. We Grow Free With His Name, And Find It Ornamental Now, But In His Own Day His Friends Were Few.

By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. In Fact, It Is As Difficult To Appropriate The Thoughts Of Others As It Is To Invent.

Men Of Sense Esteem Wealth To Be The Assimilation Of Nature To Themselves, The Converting Of The Sap And Juices Of The Planet To The Incarnation And Nutriment Of Their Design.

There Is No Way To Success In Art But To Take Off Your Coat, Grind Paint, And Work Like A Digger On The Railroad, All Day And Every Day.

If A Man Owns Land, The Land Owns Him.

Evermore In The World Is This Marvelous Balance Of Beauty And Disgust, Magnificence And Rats.

The Civility Of No Race Can Be Perfect Whilst Another Race Is Degraded. It Is A Doctrine Alike Of The Oldest And Of The Newest Philosophy, That Man Is One, And That You Cannot Injure Any Member, Without A Sympathetic Injury To All The Members

Nature Abhors The Old.

Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends. We're So Glad You Could Attend, Come Inside, Come Inside.

There Is Nothing We Value And Hunt And Cultivate And Strive To Draw To Us, But In Some Hour We Turn And Rend It.

Thought And Knowledge Are Natures In Which Apparatus And Pretension Avail Nothing. Gowns, And Pecuniary Foundations, Though Of Towns Of Gold, Can Never Countervail The Least Sentence Or Syllable Of Wit. Forget This, And Out American Colleges Will Recede In Their Public Importance Whilst They Grow Richer Every Year.

I See The Spectacle Of Morning From The Hilltop Over Against My House, From Daybreak To Sunrise, With Emotions Which An Angel Might Share. The Long Slender Bars Of Cloud Float Like Fishes In The Sea Of Crimson Light. From The Earth, As A Shore, I Look Out Into That Silent Sea. I Seem To Partake Its Rapid Transformations; The Active Enchantment Reaches My Dust, And I Dilate And Conspire With The Morning Wind.

I Am Defeated All The Time, Yet To Victory I Am Born.

It Is One Of The Beautiful Compensations In This Life That No One Can Sincerely Try To Help Another Without Helping Himself.

The House Praises The Carpenter.

A Right Rule For A Club Would Be, Admit No Man Whose Presence Excludes Any One Topic. It Requires People Who Are Not Surprised Andshocked, Who Do And Let Do, And Let Be, Who Sink Trifles, And Know Solid Values, And Who Take A Great Deal For Granted.

What A Man Does, That He Has. What Has He To Do With Hope Or Fear? In Himself Is His Might. Let Him Regard No Good As Solid But That Which Is In His Nature, And Which Must Grow Out Of Him As Long As He Exists. The Goods Of Fortune May Come And Go Like Summer Leaves; Let Him Scatter Them On Every Wind As The Momentary Signs Of His Infinite Productiveness.

Not In Nature But In Man Is All The Beauty And Worth He Sees. The World Is Very Empty, And Is Indebted To This Gilding, Exalting Soul For All Its Pride.

And, In Fine, The Ancient Precept, "know Thyself," And The Modern Precept, "study Nature," Become At Last One Maxim.

Beauty Through My Senses Stole; I Yielded Myself To The Perfect Whole.

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.

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.

To Believe Your Own Thought, To Believe That What Is True For You In Your Private Heart Is True For All Men That Is Genius.

Culture Implies All Which Gives The Mind Possession Of Its Own Powers, As Languages To The Critic, Telescope To The Astronomer. Culture Alters The Political Status Of An Individual. It Raises A Rival Royalty In A Monarchy. 'tis King Against King. It Is Ever A Romance Of History In All Dynasties--the Co-presence Of The Revolutionary Force In Intellect. It Creates A Personal Independence Which The Monarch Cannot Look Down, And To Which He Must Often Succumb.

What You Do Thunders Above Your Head So Loudly, I Cannot Hear The Words You Speak.

Words You Speak

The Task Ahead Of Us Is Never As Great As The Power Behind Us.

A Man Makes Inferiors His Superiors By Heat; Self Control Is The Rule. Anger Is An Uncontrollable Feeling That Betrays What You Are When You Are Not Yourself. Anger Is That Powerful Internal Force That Blows Out The Light Of Reason. Know This To Be The Enemy: It Is Anger, Born Of Desire.

Every Sweet Has Its Sour; Every Evil Its Good.

A Mob Is A Society Obodies, Voluntarily Bereaving Themselves Oreason, And Traversing Its Work. The Mob Is Man, Voluntarily Descending To The Nature Othe Beast. Its Fit Hour Oactivity Is Night; Its Actions Are Insane, Like Its Whole Constitution.

There Is Always Safety In Valor.

It Was High Counsel That I Once Heard Given To A Young Person, 'always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.'

I Pay The Schoolmaster, But 'tis The Schoolboys That Educate My Son.

Eloquence Must Be Grounded On The Plainest Narrative. Afterwards, It May Warm Itself Until It Exhales Symbols Of Every Kind And Color, Speaks Only Through The Most Poetic Forms; But First And Last, It Must Still Be At Bottom A Biblical Statement Of Fact.

The Etymologist Finds The Deadest Word To Have Been Once A Brilliant Picture. Language Is Fossil Poetry. As The Limestone Of The Continent Consists Of Infinite Masses Of The Shells Of Animalcules, So Language Is Made Up Of Images Or Tropes, Which Now, In Their Secondary Use, Have Long Ceased To Remind Us Of Their Poetic Origin.

Be Not The Slave Of Your Own Past.

She Shows Us Only Surfaces, But She Is Million-fathoms Deep.

New Arts Destroy The Old.

Valor Consists In The Power Of Self Recovery.

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

Every Man's Nature Is A Sufficient Advertisement To Him Of The Character Of His Fellows.

The Americans Have No Faith, They Rely On The Power Of A Dollar; They Are Deaf To Sentiment.

Let Us Leave Hurry To Slaves.

These Arts Open Great Gates Of A Future, Promising To Make The World Plastic And To Lift Human Life Out Of Its Beggary To A God- Like Ease And Power.

Life Is Not Intellectual Or Critical, But Sturdy. Its Chief Good Is For Well-mixed People Who Can Enjoy What They Find, Without Question.

For, The Advantages Which Fashion Values, Are Plants Which Thrive In Very Confined Localities, In A Few Streets, Namely. Out Of This Precinct, They Go For Nothing; Are Of No Use In The Farm, In The Forest, In The Market, In War, In The Nuptial Society, In The Literary Or Scientific Circle, At Sea, In Friendship, In The Heaven Of Thought Or Virtue.

The Possibility Of Interpretation Lies In The Identity Of The Observer With The Observed. Each Material Thing Has Its Celestial Side; Has Its Translation, Through Humanity, Into The Spiritual And Necessary Sphere, Where It Plays A Part As Indestructible As Any Other.

There Is More In Every Person's Soul Than We Think.

Nothing Can Be Preserved That Is Not Good.

Power Resides In The Moment Of Transition From A Past To A New State.

Universities Are Of Course Hostile To Geniuses, Which, Seeing And Using Ways Of Their Own, Discredit The Routine: As Churches And Monasteries Persecute Youthful Saints.

One More Fagot Of These Adamantine Bandages Is The New Science Of Statistics.

An Answer In Words Is Delusive; It Is Really No Answer To The Questions You Ask.

Our Spontaneous Action Is Always The Best. You Cannot, With Your Best Deliberation And Heed, Come So Close To Any Question As Your Spontaneous Glance Shall Bring You.

Do You Love Me? Means At Last Do You See The Same Truth I See? If You Do, We Are Happy Together; But When Presently One Of Us Passes Into The Perception Of A New Truth, We Are Divorced And The Force Of All Nature Cannot Hold Us To Each Other.

The Kingdom Of Man Over Nature, Which Cometh Not With Observation,--a Dominion Such As Now Is Beyond His Dream Of God,--he Shall Enter Without More Wonder Than The Blind Man Feels Who Is Gradually Restored To Perfect Sight.

A Character Is Like An Acrostic Or Alexandrian Stanza; - Read It Forward, Backward, Or Across, It Still Spells The Same Thing.

Napoleon Said Of Massena, That He Was Not Himself Until The Battle Began To Go Against Him; Then, When The Dead Began To Fall In Ranks Around Him, Awoke His Powers Of Combination, And He Put On Terror And Victory As A Robe.

The Plays Of Children Are Nonsense, But Very Educative Nonsense. So It Is With The Largest And Solemnest Things, With Commerce, Government, Church, Marriage, And So With The History Of Every Man's Bread, And The Ways By Which He Is To Come By It.

The Population Of The World Is A Conditional Population; These Are Not The Best, But The Best That Could Live In The Existing State Of Soils, Gases, Animals, And Morals: The Best That Could Yet Live; There Shall Be A Better, Please God.

But The Man And Woman Of Seventy Assume To Know All, They Have Outlived Their Hope, They Renounce Aspiration, Accept The Actual For The Necessary And Talk Down To The Young. Let Them Then Become Organs Of The Holy Ghost; Let Them Be Lovers; Let Them Behold Truth; And Their Eyes Are Uplifted, Their Wrinkles Smoothed, They Are Perfumed Again With Hope And Power.

Beauty Is The Moment Of Transition, As If The Form Were Just Ready To Flow Into Other Forms.

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.

Do What You're Afraid To Do.

The Only Reward Of Virtue Is Virtue.

Do Not Tell Me Of My Obligation To Put All Poor Men In Good Situations. Are They My Poor? I Tell Thee, Thou Foolish Philanthropist, That I Grudge The Dollar, The Dime, The Cent, I Give To Such Men As Do Not Belong To Me And To Whom I Do Not Belong

I Read Your Piece On Plato. Holmes, When You Strike At A King, You Must Kill Him.

Ennui Shortens Life, And Bereaves The Day Of Its Light.

The Visible Heavens And Earth Sympathize With Jesus.

Great Works Of Art Have No More Affecting Lesson For Us Than This. They Teach Us To Abide By Our Own Spontaneous Expression With Good Humored Inflexibility Whether The Whole Cry Of Voices Is On The Other Side.

A Man's Power To Connect His Thought With Its Proper Symbol, And So To Utter It, Depends On The Simplicity Of His Character, That Is, Upon His Love Of Truth, And His Desire To Communicate It Without Loss.

Men Love To Wonder, And That Is The Seed Of Our Science, And Such Is The Mechanical Determination Of Our Age, And So Recent Are Our Best Contrivances, That Use Has Not Dulled Our Joy And Pride In Them. These Arts Open Great Gates Of A Future, Promising To Make The World Plastic And To Lift Human Life Out Of Its Beggary To A Godlike Ease And Power.

It Is In The Stomach Of Plants That Development Begins, And Ends In The Circles Of The Universe. 'tis A Long Scale From The Gorilla To The Gentleman,--from The Gorilla To Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to The Sanctities Of Religion, The Refinements Of Legislation, The Summit Of Science, Art, And Poetry. The Beginnings Are Slow And Infirm, But It Is An Always Accelerated March.

You Take A Weakness And Start Making It Stronger.. You Don't Have To Build Your Strengths - That You Already Possess... It Is Your Weakness That Needs The Exercise

Men Such As They Are, Very Naturally Seek Money Or Power; And Power Because It Is As Good As Money.

The Multitude Of False Churches Accredits The True Religion.

Then, Though I Prize My Friends, I Cannot Afford To Talk With Them And Study Their Visions, Lest I Lose My Own. It Would Indeed Give Me A Certain Household Joy To Quit This Lofty Seeking, This Spiritual Astronomy, Or Search Of Stars, And Come Down To Warm Sympathies With You; But Then I Know Well I Shall Mourn Always The Vanishing Of My Mighty Gods.

All I Know Is Reception; I Am And I Have: But I Do Not Get, And When I Fancied I Had Gotten Anything, I Found I Did Not.

It Is A Capital Blunder; As You Discover, When Another Man Recites His Charities.

Words Are Finite Organs Of The Infinite Mind. They Cannot Cover The Dimensions Of What Is In Truth. They Break, Chop, And Impoverish It.

A System-grinder Hates The Truth.

The Virtues Of Society Are The Vices Of The Saints.

Science Surpasses The Old Miracles Of Mythology.

The Charm Of Fine Manners Is Music And Sculpture And Picture To Many Who Do Not Pretend To Appreciation Of These Arts.

A Man Of Genius Is Privileged Only As Far As He Is Genius. His Dullness Is As Insupportable As Any Other Dullness.

Eloquence Shows The Power And Possibility Of Man.

I Do Not Hesitate To Read. All Good Books In Translations. What Is Really Best In Any Book Is Translatable-any Real Insight Or Broad Human Sentiment.

Do Not Be Too Timid And Squeamish About Your Actions. All Life Is An Experiment. The More Experiments You Make The Better. What If They Are A Little Coarse And You May Get Your Coat Soiled Or Torn? What If You Do Fail, And Get Fairly Rolled In The Dirt Once Or Twice? Up Again, You Shall Never Be So Afraid Of A Tumble.

Why Should We Not Have A First-hand And Immediate Experience Of God?

The Religions Are Obsolete When The Reforms Do Not Proceed From Them.

Thought Is The Blossom; Language The Bud; Action The Fruit Behind It.

Let Us Unlearn Our Wisdom Of The World. Let Us Lie Low In The Lord's Power, And Learn That Truth Alone Makes Rich And Great.

The Intellect Searches Out The Absolute Order Of Things As They Stand In The Mind Of God, And Without The Colors Of Affection. The Intellectual And The Active Powers Seem To Succeed Each Other, And The Exclusive Activity Of The One Generates The Exclusive Activity Of The Other. There Is Something Unfriendly In Each To The Other, But They Are Like The Alternate Periods Of Feeding And Working In Animals; Each Prepares And Will Be Followed By The Other.

My Book Should Smell Of Pines And Resound With The Hum Of Insects.

Cowardice Shuts The Eyes Till The Sky Is Not Larger Than A Calf-skin: Shuts The Eyes So That We Cannot See The Horse That Is Running Away With Us; Worse, Shuts The Eyes Of The Mind And Chills The Heart.

Those Who Are Esteemed Umpires Of Taste, Are Often Persons Who Have Acquired Some Knowledge Of Admired Pictures Or Sculptures, Andhave An Inclination For Whatever Is Elegant; But If You Inquire Whether They Are Beautiful Souls, And Whether Their Own Acts Are Like Fair Pictures, You Learn That They Are Selfish And Sensual. Their Cultivation Is Local, As If You Should Rub A Log Of Dry Wood In One Spot To Produce Fire, All The Rest Remaining Cold.

The Best Part Of Health Is Fine Disposition

So Nigh Is Grandeur To Our Dust, So Near Is God To Man, When Duty Whispers Low, 'thou Must,' The Youth Whispers, 'i Can.

The Uses Of Travel Are Occasional, And Short; But The Best Fruit It Finds, When It Finds It, Is Conversation; And This Is A Main Function Of Life.

We Put Our Love Where We Have Put Our Labor.

Calmness Is Always Godlike.

If We Walk In The Woods, We Must Feed Mosquitoes.

Society Always Consists, In Greatest Part, Of Young And Foolish Persons. The Old, Who Have Seen Through The Hypocrisy Of The Courts And Statesmen, Die, And Leave No Wisdom To Their Sons. They Believe Their Own Newspaper, As Their Fathers Did At Their Age.

Always The Seer Is A Sayer. Somehow His Dream Is Told; Somehow He Publishes It With Solemn Joy: Sometimes With Pencil On Canvas, Sometimes With Chisel On Stone, Sometimes In Towers And Aisles Of Granite, His Soul's Worship Is Builded; Sometimes In Anthems Of Indefinite Music, But Clearest And Most Permanent, In Words.

Eloquence Is The Appropriate Organ Of The Highest Personal Energy.

In Science We Have To Consider Two Things: Power And Circumstance.

The Imagination And The Senses Cannot Be Gratified At The Same Time.

How Can We Speak Of The Action Of The Mind Under Any Divisions, As Of Its Knowledge, Of Its Ethics, Of Its Works, And So Forth, Since It Melts Will Into Perception, Knowledge Into Act? Each Becomes The Other. Itself Alone Is.

Some Will Always Be Above Others. Destroy The Inequality Today, And It Will Appear Again Tomorrow.

Our Statute Is A Currency Which We Stamp With Our Own Portrait.

It Is The Fine Souls Who Serve Us, And Not What Is Called Fine Society. Fine Society Is Only A Self-protection Against The Vulgarities Of The Street And The Tavern.

I Do Not Wish To Please Him; I Wish That He Should Wish To Please Me.

An Imaginative Book Renders Us Much More Service At First, By Stimulating Us Through Its Tropes, Than Afterward, When We Arrive Atthe Precise Sense Of The Author. I Think Nothing Is Of Any Value In Books, Excepting The Transcendental And Extraordinary.

There Are Three Wants Which Never Can Be Satisfied: That Of The Rich, Who Wants Something More; That Of The Sick, Who Wants Something Different; And That Of The Traveler, Who Says Anywhere But Here.

That For Which Paul Lived And Died So Gloriously; That For Which Jesus Gave Himself To Be Crucified; The End That Animated The Thousand Martyrs And Heroes Who Have Followed His Steps, Was To Redeem Us From A Formal Religion, And Teach Us To Seek Our Well-being In The Formation Of The Soul.

Our Age Is Retrospective. It Builds The Sepulchres Of The Fathers. It Writes Biographies, Histories And Criticism.

There Is No Prosperity, Trade, Art, City, Or Great Material Wealth Of Any Kind, But If You Trace It Home, You Will Find It Rooted In A Thought Of Some Individual Man.

The Good Husband Finds Method As Efficient In The Packing Of Fire-wood In A Shed, Or In The Harvesting Of Fruits In The Cellar, As In Peninsular Campaigns Or The Files Of The Department Of State.

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.

If You Would Lift Me Up, You've Got To Be On Higher Ground.

I Believe It Is The Conviction Of The Purest Men, That The Net Amount Of Man And Man Does Not Much Vary. Each Is Incomparably Superior To His Companion In Some Faculty. His Want Of Skill In Other Directions, Has Added To His Fitness For His Own Work.

Every Man Supposes Himself Not To Be Fully Understood; And If There Is Any Truth In Him, If He Rests At Last On The Divine Soul, I See Not How It Can Be Otherwise. The Last Chamber, The Last Closet, He Must Feel, Was Never Opened; There Is Always A Residuum Unknown, Unanalyzable. That Is, Every Man Believes That He Has A Greater Possibility.

The Search After The Great Men Is The Dream Of Youth, And The Most Serious Occupation Of Manhood.

To The Attentive Eye, Each Moment Of The Year Has Its Own Beauty, And In The Same Fields, It Beholds, Every Hour, A Picture Which Was Never Seen Before, And Which Shall Never Be Seen Again.

Our Age Is Very Cheap And Intelligible. Unroof Any House, And You Shall Find It. The Well-being Consists In Having A Sufficiency Of Coffee And Toast, With A Daily Newspaper; A Well Glazed Parlor, With Marbles, Mirrors And Centre-table; And The Excitement Of A Few Parties And A Few Rides In A Year.

Character Wants Room; Must Not Be Crowded On By Persons, Nor Be Judged From Glimpses Got In The Press Of Affairs, Or On Few Occasions. It Needs Perspective, As A Great Building.

The Love That You Withhold Is The Pain That You Carry.

It Is Not What Talents Or Genius A Man Has, But How He Is To His Talents, That Constitutes Friendship And Character. The Man Thatstands By Himself, The Universe Stands By Him Also.

Women, More Than All, Are The Element And Kingdom Of Illusion. Being Fascinated, They Fascinate.

Fear, When Your Friends Say To You What You Have Done Well, And Say It Through; But When They Stand With Uncertain Timid Looks Of Respect And Half-dislike, And Must Suspend Their Judgement For Years To Come, You May Begin To Hope.

Only By Obedience To His Genius; Only By The Freest Activity In The Way Constitutional To Him, Does An Angel Seem To Arise Beforea Man, And Lead Him By The Hand Out Of All The Wards Of The Prison.

Pride Eradicates All Vices But Itself.

What A Benefit Would The American Government, Not Yet Relieved Of Its Extreme Need, Render To Itself, And To Every City, Village And Hamlet In The States, If It Would Tax Whiskey And Rum Almost To The Point Of Prohibition! Was It Bonaparte Who Said That He Found Vices Very Good Patriots? "he Got Five Millions From The Love Of Brandy, And He Should Be Glad To Know Which Of The Virtues Would Pay Him As Much." Tobacco And Opium Have Broad Backs, And Will Cheerfully Carry The Load Of Armies, If You Choose To Make Them Pay High For Such Joy As They Give And Such Harm As They Do.

Society Has No Bribe For Me.

I Am So Much A Unitarian As This: That I Believe The Human Mind Can Admit But One God, And That Every Effort To Pay Religious Homage To More Than One Being Goes To Take Away All Right Ideas.

When Duty Whispers Low, Thou Must, The Youth Replies, I Can.

We Infer The Spirit Of The Nation In Great Measure From The Language, Which Is A Sort Of Monument, To Which Each Forcible Individual In A Course Of Many Hundred Years Has Contributed A Stone.

The One Prudence In Life Is Concentration; The One Evil Is Dissipation: And It Makes No Difference Whether Our Dissipations Are Coarse Or Fine; Property And Its Cares, Friends And A Social Habit, Or Politics, Or Music, Or Feasting. Everything Is Good Which Takes Away One Plaything And Delusion More, And Drives Us Home To Add One Stroke Of Faithful Work.

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.

We Honor The Rich Because They Have Externally The Freedom, Power, And Grace Which We Feel To Be Proper To Man, Proper To Us.

A Man Is The Whole Encyclopedia Of Facts.

Poetry Makes Its Own Pertinence, And A Single Stanza Outweighs A Book Of Prose.

The Customer Is The Immediate Jewel Of Our Souls. Him We Flatter, Him We Feast, Compliment, Vote For, And Will Not Contradict.

It Is Easy To See That A Greater Self-reliance Must Work A Revolution In All The Offices And Relations Of Men; In Their Religion; In Their Education; In Their Pursuits; Their Modes Of Living; Their Association; In Their Property; In Their Speculative Views.

No Man Ever Prayed Heartily Without Learning Something.

A Cynic Can Chill And Dishearten With A Single Word.

There Are Other Measures Of Self-respect For A Man, Than The Number Of Clean Shirts He Puts On Every Day.

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.

I Have Come To Believe That The Whole World Is An Enigma, A Harmless Enigma That Is Made Terrible By Our Own Mad Attempt To Interpret It As Though It Had An Underlying Truth. If Two Or Three Persons Should Come With A High Spiritual Aim And With Great Powers, The World Would Fall Into Their Hands Like A Ripe Peach.

Right Is More Beautiful Than Private Affection, And Is Compatible With Universal Wisdom.

And Striving To Be Man, The Worm Mounts Through All The Spires Of Form.

Be Yourself; No Base Imitator Of Another, But Your Best Self. There Is Something Which You Can Do Better Than Another. Listen To The Inward Voice And Bravely Obey That. Do The Things At Which You Are Great, Not What You Were Never Made For.

There Can Be No Excess To Love, None To Knowledge, None To Beauty.

Everything In The Universe Goes By Indirection. There Are No Straight Lines.

Style Is Only The Frame To Hold Your Thoughts. It Is Like The Sash Of A Window; If Heavy, It Will Obscure The Light.

Commerce Is Of Trivial Import; Love, Faith, Truth Of Character, The Aspiration Of Man, These Are Sacred.

We Do Not Know Today Whether We Are Busy Or Idle. In Times When We Thought Ourselves Indolent, We Have Afterwards Discovered That Much Was Accomplished, And Much Was Begun In Us.

Self Improvement

Each Man Has His Own Vocation. The Talent Is The Call. There Is One Direction In Which All Space Is Open To Him. He Has Faculties Silently Inviting Him Thither To Endless Exertion. He Is Like A Ship In The River; He Runs Against Obstructions On Every Side But One; On That Side All Obstruction Is Taken Away, And He Sweeps Serenely Over A Deepening Channel Into An Infinite Sea.

Every Burned Book Or House Enlightens The World; Every Suppressed Or Expunged Word Reverberates Through The Earth From Side To Side.

A Man Is What He Thinks About All Day Long.

We Mark With Light In The Memory The Few Interviews We Have Had With Souls That Made Our Souls Wiser, That Spoke What We Thought, That Told Us What We Knew, That Gave Us Leave To Be What We Inly Are.

How Painful To Give A Gift To Any Person Of Sensibility, Or Of Equality! It Is Next Worst To Receiving One

Let Him Go Where He Will, He Can Only Find So Much Beauty Or Worth As He Carries.

No Picture Of Life Can Have Any Veracity That Does Not Admit The Odious Facts. A Man's Power Is Hooped In By A Necessity, Which, By Many Experiments, He Touches On Every Side, Until He Learns Its Arc.

When Fear Enters The Heart Of A Man At Hearing The Names Of Candidates And The Reading Of Laws That Are Proposed, Then Is The State Safe, But When These Things Are Heard Without Regard, As Above Or Below Us, Then Is The Commonwealth Sick Or Dead.

It Is A Fact Often Observed, That Men Have Written Good Verses Under The Inspiration Of Passion, Who Cannot Write Well Under Other Circumstances.

As The Farmer Casts Into The Ground The Finest Ears Of His Grain, The Time Will Come When We Too Shall Hold Nothing Back, But Shall Eagerly Convert More Than We Now Possess Into Means And Powers, When We Shall Be Willing To Sow The Sun And The Moon For Seeds.

There Are Not In The World At Any One Time More Than A Dozen Persons Who Read And Understand Plato:-never Enough To Pay For An Edition Of His Works; Yet To Every Generation These Come Duly Down, For The Sake Of Those Few Persons, As If God Brought Them Written In His Hand.

We But Half Express Ourselves, And Are Ashamed Of That Divine Idea Which Each Of Us Represents.

The Evolution Of A Highly Destined Society Must Be Moral; It Must Run In The Grooves Of The Celestial Wheels.

Activity Is Contagious.

Dare To Love God Without Mediator Or Veil.

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

Grow Angry Slowly - There's Plenty Of Time.

A Fact Is The End Or Last Issue Of Spirit. The Visible Creation Is The Terminus Or The Circumference Of The Invisible World.

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.

The Real And Lasting Victories Are Those Of Peace, And Not Of War.

Every Individual Man Has A Bias Which He Must Obey, And...it Is Only As He Feels And Obeys This That He Rightly Develops And Attains His Legitimate Power In The World. It Is His Magnetic Needle, Which Points Always In One Direction To His Proper Path.... He Is Never Happy Nor Strong Until He Finds It, Keeps It.

So In Accepting The Leading Of The Sentiments, It Is Not What We Believe Concerning The Immortality Of The Soul, Or The Like, But The Universal Impulse To Believe, That Is The Material Circumstance, And Is The Principal Fact In This History Of The Globe.

We Boast Our Emancipation From Many Superstitions; But If We Have Broken Any Idols, It Is Through A Transfer Of Idolatry.

The Imaginative Faculty Of The Soul Must Be Fed With Objects Immense And Eternal.

Preaching Is The Expression Of Moral Sentiments Applied To The Duties Of Life.

Railroad Iron Is A Magician's Rod, In Its Power To Evoke The Sleeping Energies Of Land And Water.

To Educate The Wise Man, The State Exists; And With The Appearance Of The Wise Man, The State Expires. The Appearance Of Charactermakes The State Unnecessary. The Wise Man Is The State.

Trending Author

Michael M. Honda

Category