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Consider What You Have In The Smallest Well-chosen Library-a Company Of The Wisest And Wittiest Men Which Can Be Plucked Out Of All Civilized Countries In A Thousand Years. The Men Themselves Were Then Hidden And Inaccessible. They Were Solitary, Impatient Of Interruption, And Fenced By Etiquette. But Now They Are Immortal, And The Thought They Did Not Reveal, Even To Their Bosom Friends, Is Here Written Out In Transparent Words Of Light To Us, Who Are Strangers Of Another Age.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Consider What You Have

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Consider What You Have In The Smallest Well-chosen Library-a Company Of The Wisest And Wittiest Men Which Can Be Plucked Out Of All Civilized Countries In A Thousand Years. The Men Themselves Were Then Hidden And Inaccessible. They Were Solitary, Impatient Of Interruption, And Fenced By Etiquette. But Now They Are Immortal, And The Thought They Did Not Reveal, Even To Their Bosom Friends, Is Here Written Out In Transparent Words Of Light To Us, Who Are Strangers Of Another Age.

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The Energetic Action Of The Times Develops Individualism, And The Religious Appear Isolated. I Esteem This A Step In The Right Direction. Heaven Deals With Us On No Representative System. Souls Are Not Saved In Bundles.

The Youth, Intoxicated With His Admiration Of A Hero, Fails To See, That It Is Only A Projection Of His Own Soul, Which He Admires.

Traveling Is A Fool's Paradise. Our First Journeys Discover To Us The Indifference Of Places. At Home I Dream That At Naples, At Rome, I Can Be Intoxicated With Beauty, And Lose My Sadness. I Pack My Trunk, Embrace My Friends, Embark On The Sea, And At Last Wake Up In Naples, And There Beside Me Is The Stern Fact, The Sad Self, Unrelenting, Identical, That I Fled From. I Seek The Vatican, And The Palaces. I Affect To Be Intoxicated With Sights And Suggestions, But I Am Not Intoxicated. My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

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.

The Wheels And Springs Of Man Are All Set To The Hypothesis Of The Permanence Of Nature. We Are Not Built Like A Ship To Be Tossed, But Like A House To Stand.

Say, What Other Metre Is It Than The Meeting Of The Eyes? Nature Poureth Into Nature Through The Channels Of That Feature Riding On The Ray Of Sight, Fleeter Far Than Whirlwinds Go, Or For Service, Or Delight, Hearts To Hearts Their Meaning Show.

The Essence Of Friendship Is Entireness, A Total Magnanimity And Trust.

Perpetual Modernness Is The Measure Of Merit, In Every Work Of Art; Since The Author Of It Was Not Misled By Anything Short- Livedor Local, But Abode By Real And Abiding Traits.

To Fill The Hour──that Is Happiness.

Time Management

There Is More Difference In The Quality Of Our Pleasures Than In The Amount.

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

How Casually And Unobservedly We Make All Our Most Valued Acquaintances.

Men Do Not Believe In The Power Of Education. We Do Not Think We Can Speak To Divine Sentiments In Man, And We Do Not Try. We Renounce All High Aims.

That Which We Call Sin In Others Is Experiment For Us.

Standing On The Bare Ground,--my Head Bathed By The Blithe Air And Uplifted Into Infinite Space,--all Mean Egotism Vanishes. I Become A Transparent Eyeball; I Am Nothing; I See All; The Currents Of The Universal Being Circulate Through Me; I Am Part Or Parcel Of God.

Solitude Is Naught And Society Is Naught. Alternate Them And The Good Of Each Is Seen.

If We Shall Take The Good We Find, Asking No Questions, We Shall Have Heaping Measures.

The New Statement Is Always Hated By The Old, And, To Those Dwelling In The Old, Comes Like An Abyss Of Skepticism.

The Hero Is A Mind Of Such Balance That No Disturbances Can Shake His Will, But Pleasantly, And, As It Were, Merrily, He Advancesto His Own Music, Alike In Frightful Alarms And In The Tipsy Mirth Of Universal Dissoluteness.

There Is One Topic Peremptorily Forbidden To All Well-bred, To All Rational Mortals, Namely, Their Distempers. If You Have Not Slept Or If You Have Slept Or If You Have Head Ache Or Sciatica Or Leprosy Or Thunder-stroke, I Beseech You, By All Angels, To Hold Your Peace And Not Pollute The Morning.

Man Is Endogenous, And Education Is His Unfolding. The Aid We Have From Others Is Mechanical, Compared With The Discoveries Of Nature In Us. What Is Thus Learned Is Delightful In The Doing, And The Effect Remains.

You Send Your Child To The Schoolmaster, But 'tis The Schoolboys Who Educate Him. You Send Him To The Latin Class, But Much Of Histuition Comes, On His Way To School, From The Shop- Windows.

Wit Makes Its Own Welcome, And Levels All Distinctions. No Dignity, No Learning, No Force Of Character, Can Make Any Stand Against Good Wit.

Great Geniuses Have The Shortest Biographies.

Genius Seems To Consist Merely In Trueness Of Sight, In Using Such Words As Show That The Man Was An Eye-witness, And Not A Repeater Of What Was Told.

Do Not Craze Yourself With Thinking, But Go About Your Business Anywhere.

The Eye Obeys Exactly The Action Of The Mind.

It Is One Of The Biggest Blessing That You Can Be Stupid With Your True Friends And Behave Like You Shame To Do Elsewhere

Men Love To Wonder, And That Is The Seed Of Science.

Though We Travel The World Over To Find The Beautiful, We Must Carry It With Us Or We Find It Not.

But I Shall Hear Without Pain, That I Play The Courtier Very Ill, And Talk Of That Which I Do Not Well Understand.

In Every Work Of Genius We Recognize Our Own Rejected Thoughts; They Come Back To Us With A Certain Alienated Majesty.

The Great Majority Of Men Grow Up And Grow Old In Seeming And Following.

The Greater Speed And Success That Distinguish The Planting Of The Human Race In This Country, Over All Other Plantations In History, Owe Themselves Mainly To The New Subdivisions Of The State Into Small Corporations Of Land And Power.

In The Woods We Return To Reason And Faith.

The Astronomers Said, 'give Us Matter And A Little Motion And We Will Construct The Universe. It Is Not Enough That We Should Have Matter, We Must Also Have A Single Impulse, One Shove To Launch The Mass And Generate The Harmony Of The Centrifugal And Centripetal Forces.' ... There Is No End To The Consequences Of The Act. That Famous Aboriginal Push Propagates Itself Through All The Balls Of The System, And Through Every Atom Of Every Ball.

The Universal Does Not Attract Us Until Housed In An Individual.

A Cynic Can Chill And Dishearten With A Single Word.

Nothing Can Bring You Happiness But Yourself Especially How You Choose To Think About Your Situation.

The First Wealth Is Health.

He Is The Rich Man In Whom The People Are Rich, And He Is The Poor Man In Whom The People Are Poor; And How To Give Access To Themasterpieces Of Art And Nature, Is The Problem Of Civilization.

We Learn Geology The Morning After The Earthquake.

This Very Certain That Each Man Carries In His Eye The Exact Indication Of His Rank In The Immense Scale Of Men, And We Are Always Learning To Read It. A Complete Man Should Need No Auxiliaries To His Personal Presence.

If I Quake, What Matters It What I Quake At? Our Proper Vice Takes Form In One Or Another Shape, According To The Sex, Age, Or Temperament Of The Person, And, If We Are Capable Of Fear, Will Readily Find Terrors.

Every Man Is A Borrower And A Mimic, Life Is Theatrical And Literature A Quotation.

If Any Mention Was Made Of Homicide, Madness, Adultery, And Intolerable Tortures, We Would Let The Church-bells Ring Louder, The Church-organ Swell Its Peal And Drown The Hideous Sound. The Sugar They Raised Was Excellent: Nobody Tasted Blood In It.

Every Evil To Which We Do Not Succumb Is A Benefactor.

We Aim Above The Mark, To Hit The Mark. Every Act Hath Some Falsehood Of Exaggeration In It.

Only That Is Poetry Which Cleanses And Mans Me.

The Fatal Trait Of The Times Is The Divorce Between Religion And Morality.

One Of The Illusions Of Life Is That The Present Hour Is Not The Critical, Decisive One.

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

A Lady With Whom I Was Riding In The Forest Said To Me That The Woods Always Seemed To Her To Wait, As If The Genii Who Inhabit Them Suspend Their Deeds Until The Wayfarer Had Passed Onward; A Thought Which Poetry Has Celebrated In The Dance Of The Fairies, Which Breaks Off On The Approach Of Human Feet.

Intellectual Tasting Of Life Will Not Supersede Muscular Activity. If A Man Should Consider The Nicety Of The Passage Of A Piece Of Bread Down His Throat, He Would Starve.

All Poets Have Signalized Their Consciousness Of Rare Moments When They Were Superior To Themselves, -when A Light, A Freedom, A Power Came To Them Which Lifted Them To Performances Far Better Than They Could Reach At Other Times.

Since Everything In Nature Answers To A Moral Power, If Any Phenomenon Remains Brute And Dark, It Is That The Corresponding Faculty In The Observer Is Not Yet Active.

Character Is Higher Than Intellect. Thinking Is The Function; Living Is The Functionary.

We Do Not Quite Forgive A Giver. The Hand That Feeds Us Is In Some Danger Of Being Bitten. We Can Receive Anything From Love, Forthat Is A Way Of Receiving It From Ourselves; But Not From Any One Who Assumes To Bestow. We Sometimes Hate The Meat Which We Eat, Because There Seems Something Of Degrading Dependence In Living It.

Yet These Uneasy Pleasures And Fine Pains Are For Curiosity, And Not For Life.

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.

We Are Thus Assisted By Natural Objects In The Expression Of Particular Meanings. But How Great A Language To Convey Such Pepper-corn Informations!

Now That Is The Wisdom Of A Man, In Every Instance Of His Labor, To Hitch His Wagon To A Star, And See His Chore Done By The Gods Themselves. That Is The Way We Are Strong, By Borrowing The Might Of The Elements. The Forces Of Steam, Gravity, Galvanism, Light, Magnets, Wind, Fire, Serve Us Day By Day And Cost Us Nothing.

The Peril Of Every Fine Faculty Is The Delight Of Playing With It For Pride. Talent Is Commonly Developed At The Expense Of Character, And The Greater It Grows, The More Is The Mischief. Talent Is Mistaken For Genius, A Dogma Or System For Truth, Ambition For Greatness, Ingenuity For Poetry, Sensuality For Art.

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.

Savages Cling To A Local God Of One Tribe Or Town. The Broad Ethics Of Jesus Were Quickly Narrowed To Village Theologies, Which Preach An Election Or Favoritism.

Scholarship Is To Be Created Not By Compulsion, But By Awakening A Pure Interest In Knowledge.

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.

We All Need Someone Who Can Help Us Do What We Already Can.

The Life Of Man Is The True Romance, Which When It Is Valiantly Conduced, Will Yield The Imagination A Higher Joy Than Any Fiction.

It Is The Fault Of Our Rhetoric That We Cannot Strongly State One Fact Without Seeming To Belie Some Other.

Sympathy Is A Supporting Atmosphere, And In It We Unfold Easily And Well.

The Senses Interfere Everywhere, And Mix Their Own Structure With All They Report Of.

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

The Resources Of The Scholar Are Proportioned To His Confidence In The Attributes Of The Intellect.

The Results Of Life Are Uncalculated And Uncalculable. The Years Teach Much Which The Days Never Know. The Persons Who Compose Our Company, Converse, And Come And Go, And Design And Execute Many Things, And Somewhat Comes Of It All, But An Unlooked For Result. The Individual Is Always Mistaken. He Designed Many Things, And Drew In Other Persons As Coadjutors, Quarrelled With Some Or All, Blundered Much, And Something Is Done; All Are A Little Advanced, But The Individual Is Always Mistaken. It Turns Out Somewhat New, And Very Unlike What He Promised Himself.

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.

Jesus And Shakespeare Are Fragments Of The Soul, And By Love I Conquer And Incorporate Them In My Own Conscious Domain. His Virtue,--is Not That Mine? His Wit,--if It Cannot Be Made Mine, It Is Not Wit.

Bad Times Have A Scientific Value. These Are Occasions A Good Learner Would Not Miss.

We Pass For What We Are.

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

Nature Is Good, But Intellect Is Better, As The Law-giver Is Before The Law-receiver.

Respect The Child. Wait And See The New Product Of Nature. Nature Loves Analogies, But Not Repetitions. Respect The Child. Be Not Too Much His Parent. Trespass Not On His Solitude.

Enthusiasm Is The Engine Of Success.

Congratulations

The Revelation Of Thought Takes Men Out Of Servitude Into Freedom.

In Sculpture Did Ever Anybody Call The Apollo A Fancy Piece? Or Say Of The Laocoon How It Might Be Made Different? A Masterpiece Of Art Has In The Mind A Fixed Place In The Chain Of Being, As Much As A Plant Or A Crystal.

All The Great Ages Have Been Ages Of Belief.

By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote.

But It Is A Cold, Lifeless Business When You Go To The Shops To Buy Something, Which Does Not Represent Your Life And Talent, But A Goldsmith's.

The Imitator Dooms Himself To Hopeless Mediocrity.

Men Seek To Be Great; They Would Have Offices, Wealth, Power, And Fame. They Think That To Be Great Is To Possess One Side Of Nature,--the Sweet, Without The Other Side,--the Bitter.

Nature And Books Belong To The Eyes That See Them.

When Nature Removes A Great Man, People Explore The Horizon For A Successor; But None Comes, And None Will. His Class Is Extinguished With Him. In Some Other And Quite Different Field, The Next Man Will Appear.

The Ancestor Of Every Action Is Thought; When We Understand That We Begin To Comprehend That Our World Is Governed By Thought And That Everything Without Had Its Counterpart Originally Within The Mind.

The Soul Contains The Event That Shall Befall It, For The Event Is Only The Actualization Of Its Thoughts; And What We Pray To Ourselves For Is Always Granted.

The Pleasure Of Eloquence Is In Greatest Part Owing Often To The Stimulus Of The Occasion Which Produces It- - To The Magic Of Sympathy, Which Exalts The Feeling Of Each By Radiating On Him The Feeling Of All.

If A Man Knows The Law, Find Out, Though He Live In A Pine Shanty, And Resort To Him. And If A Man Can Pipe Or Sing, So As To Wrap The Imprisoned Soul In An Elysium; Or Can Paint A Landscape, And Convey Into Souls And Ochres All The Enchantments Of Spring Or Autumn; Or Can Liberate And Intoxicate All People Who Hear Him With Delicious Songs And Verses; It Is Certain That The Secret Cannot Be Kept; The First Witness Tells It To A Second, And Men Go By Fives And Tens And Fifties To His Doors.

Men's Actions Are Too Strong For Them. Show Me A Man Who Has Acted, And Who Has Not Been The Victim And Slave Of His Action.

It Happens To Us Once Or Twice In A Lifetime To Be Drunk With Some Book Which Probably Has Some Extraordinary Relative Power To Intoxicate Us And None Other; And Having Exhausted That Cup Of Enchantment We Go Groping In Libraries All Our Years Afterwards In The Hope Of Being In Paradise Again.

Yet Time And Space Are But Inverse Measures Of The Force Of The Soul. The Spirit Sports With Time.

The Service A Man Renders His Friend Is Trivial And Selfish, Compared With The Service He Knows His Friend Stood In Readiness To Yield Him, Alike Before He Had Begun To Serve His Friend, And Now Also. Compared With That Good-will I Bear My Friend, The Benefit It Is In My Power To Render Him Seems Small.

There Are Men Whose Manners Have The Same Essential Splendor As The Simple And Awful Sculpture On The Friezes Of The Parthenon, And The Remains Of The Earliest Greek Art.

Our Best History Is Still Poetry.

A Third Felicity Of Age Is That It Has Found Expression. The Youth Suffers Not Only From Ungratified Desires, But From Powers Untried, And From A Picture In His Mind Of A Career Which Has As Yet No Outward Reality. He Is Tormented With The Want Of Correspondence Between Things And Thoughts.

Passion, Though A Bad Regulator, Is A Powerful Spring.

The Lover Is Made Happier By His Love Than The Object Of His Affection.

When We Can't Piece Together The Puzzle Of Our Own Lives, Remember The Best View Of A Puzzle Is From Above. Let Him Help Put You Together.

Be A Little Careful About Your Library. Do You Foresee What You Will Do With It? Very Little To Be Sure. But The Real Question Is What It Will Do With You? You Will Come Here And Get Books That Will Open Your Eyes, And Your Ears, And Your Curiosity, And Turn You Inside Out Or Outside In.

I Believe That Our Own Experience Instructs Us That 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. By Your Tampering And Thwarting And Too Much Governing He May Be Hindered From His End And Kept Out Of His Own. Respect The Child. Wait And See The New Product Of Nature. Nature Loves Analogies, But Not Repetitions. Respect The Child. Be Not Too Much His Parent. Trespass Not On His Solitude.

Because The Soul Is Progressive, It Never Quite Repeats Itself, But In Every Act Attempts The Production Of A New And Fairer Whole.

The Eyes Indicate The Antiquity Of The Soul.

Perhaps It Is The Lowest Of The Qualities Of An Orator, But It Is, On So Many Occasions, Of Chief Importance,--a Certain Robust And Radiant Physical Health; Or--shall I Say?--great Volumes Of Animal Heat.

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

Let A Man Then Know His Worth And Keep Things Under His Feet.

It Is Frivolous To Fix Pedantically The Date Of Particular Inventions. They Have All Been Invented Over And Over Fifty Times. Man Is The Arch Machine, Of Which All These Shifts Drawn From Himself Are Toy Models. He Helps Himself On Each Emergency By Copying Or Duplicating His Own Structure, Just So Far As Then Need Is.

A Man Is A Golden Impossibility. The Line He Must Walk Is A Hair's Breadth. The Wise Through Excess Of Wisdom Is Made A Fool.

The Great Make Its Feel, First Of All, The Indifference Of Circumstances. They Call Into Activity The Higher Perceptions, And Subdue The Low Habits Of Comfort And Luxury; But The Higher Perceptions Find Their Objects Everywhere; Only The Low Habits Need Palaces And Banquets.

The Key To The Age May Be This, Or That, Or The Other, As The Young Orators Describe; The Key To All Ages Is - Imbecility; Imbecility In The Vast Majority Of Men, At All Times, And, Even In Heroes, In All But Certain Eminent Moments; Victims Of Gravity

Truth Gathers Itself Spotless And Unhurt After All Our Surrenders And Concealments And Partisanship; Never Hurt By The Treachery Or Ruin Of Its Best Defenders, Whether Luther, Or William Penn, Or St. Paul.

We Commonly Say That The Rich Man Can Speak The Truth, Can Afford Honesty, Can Afford Independence Of Opinion And Action;--and That Is The Theory Of Nobility. But It Is The Rich Man In A True Sense, That Is To Say, Not The Man Of Large Income And Large Expenditure, But Solely The Man Whose Outlay Is Less Than His Income And Is Steadily Kept So.

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.

The Craft Of The Merchant Is This Bringing A Thing Where It Abounds To Where It Is Costly.

And What Greater Calamity Can Fall Upon A Nation Than The Loss Of Worship.

To Clothe The Fiery Thought In Simple Words Succeeds, For Still The Craft Of Genius Is To Mask A King In Weeds.

No One Has A Prosperity So High And Firm That Two Or Three Words Can't Dishearten It.

A Friend May Well Be Reckoned The Masterpiece Of Nature.

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.

A Collector Recently Bought At Public Auction, In London, For One Hundred And Fifty-seven Guineas, An Autograph Of Shakespeare; But For Nothing A School-boy Can Read Hamlet And Can Detect Secrets Of Highest Concernment Yet Unpublished Therein.

When There Is Sympathy, There Needs But One Wise Man In A Company And All Are Wise,--so, A Blockhead Makes A Blockhead Of His Companion. Wonderful Power To Benumb Possesses This Brother.

The Hero Is Suffered To Be Himself.

These Are The Voices Which We Hear In Solitude, But They Grow Faint And Inaudible As We Enter Into The World.

Man Is A Shrewd Inventor, And Is Ever Taking The Hint Of A New Machine From His Own Structure, Adapting Some Secret Of His Own Anatomy In Iron, Wood, And Leather, To Some Required Function In The Work Of The World.

As Gas-light Is Found To Be The Best Nocturnal Police, So The Universe Protects Itself By Pitiless Publicity.

A Man In Debt Is So Far A Slave.

All Minds Quote. Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands. By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. We Quote Not Only Books And Proverbs, But Arts, Sciences, Religion, Customs, And Laws; Nay, We Quote Temples And Houses, Tables And Chairs, By Imitation.

The Two Terrors That Discourage Creativity And Creative Living Are Fear Of Public Opinion And Undue Reverence For One's Own Consistency.

The Lover Never Sees Personal Resemblances In His Mistress To Her Kindred Or To Others. His Friends Find In Her A Likeness To Hermother, Or Her Sisters, Or To Persons Not Of Her Blood. The Lover Sees No Resemblance Except To Summer Evenings And Diamond Mornings, To Rainbows And The Song Of Birds.

Our Expenses Are All For Conformity.

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.

The Ornaments Of Our Homes Are The Friends That Visit It

The Good News Is That The Moment You Decide That What You Know Is More Important Than What You Have Been Taught To Believe, You Will Have Shifted Gears In Your Quest For Abundance. Success Comes From Within, Not From Without.

Tomorrow Is A New Day; Begin It Well And Serenely And With Too High A Spirit To Be Encumbered With Your Old Nonsense.

Positive Thinking

The City Is Recruited From The Country.

Build A Better Mousetrap And The World Will Beat A Path To Your Door.

A Weed Is A Plant Whose Virtue Is Not Yet Known.

War, To Sane Men At The Present Day, Begins To Look Like An Epidemic Insanity, Breaking Out Here And There Like The Cholera Or Influenza, Infecting Men's Brains Instead Of Their Bowels.

The Only Thing That Can Grow Is The Thing You Give Energy To.

I Find It A Great And Fatal Difference Whether I Court The Muse, Or The Muse Courts Me. That Is The Ugly Disparity Between Age And Youth.

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.

The World Is A Divine Dream, From Which We May Presently Awake To The Glories And Certainties Of Day.

Human Beings Cannot Endure The Geological Chaos They Encounter Under The Soil Of Their Own Gardens.

Men Are Better Than This Theology.

By Virtue Of This Science The Poet Is The Namer, Or Language-maker, Naming Things Sometimes After Their Appearance, Sometimes After Their Essence, And Giving To Every One Its Own Name And Not Another's, Thereby Rejoicing The Intellect, Which Delights In Detachment Or Boundary.

The Essence Of All Jokes, Of All Comedy, Seems To Be An Honest Or Well Intended Halfness; A Non Performance Of That Which Is Pretended To Be Performed, At The Same Time That One Is Giving Loud Pledges Of Performance. The Balking Of The Intellect, Is Comedy And It Announces Itself In The Pleasant Spasms We Call Laughter.

As We Refine, Our Checks Become Finer. If We Rise To Spiritual Culture, The Antagonism Takes A Spiritual Form.

That Which Befits Us, Embosomed In Beauty And Wonder As We Are, Is Cheerfulness, And Courage, And The Endeavor To Realize Our Aspirations. Shall Not The Heart Which Has Received So Much, Trust The Power By Which It Lives? May It Not Quit Other Leadings, And Listen To The Soul That Has Guided It So Gently, And Taught It So Much, Secure That The Future Will Be Worthy Of The Past?

In Every Man's Memory, With The Hours When Life Culminated Are Usually Associated Certain Books Which Met His Views.

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.

The Americans Have Many Virtues, But They Have Not Faith And Hope. I Know No Two Words Whose Meaning Is More Lost Sight Of.

Life Only Avails, Not The Having Lived.

When A Man Speaks The Truth In The Spirit Of Truth, His Eye Is As Clear As The Heavens. When He Has Base Ends, And Speaks Falsely, The Eye Is Muddy, And Sometimes Asquint.

To Be Is To Live With God.

Let Him Be Great, And Love Shall Follow Him.

Life Is Unnecessarily Long. Moments Of Insight, Of Fine Personal Relation, A Smile, A Glance,--what Ample Borrowers Of Eternity They Are!

In The Greek Cities, It Was Reckoned Profane, That Any Person Should Pretend A Property In A Work Of Art, Which Belonged To All Who Could Behold It.

A Man Of Good Sense But Of Little Faith, Whose Compassion Seemed To Lead Him To Church As Often As He Went There, Said To Me; 'that He Liked To Have Concerts, And Fairs, And Churches, And Other Public Amusements Go On.

Art Is Evidence Of Our Most Creative Moment.

The True Test Of Civilization Is Not The Census, Nor The Size Of Cities, Nor The Crops - No, But The Kind Of Man The Country Turns Out.

If We Tire Of The Saints, Shakspeare Is Our City Of Refuge.

These Are The Voices Which We Hear In Solitude, But They Grow Faint And Inaudible As We Enter Into The World. Society Everywhere Is In Conspiracy Against The Manhood Of Everyone Of Its Members. Society Is A Joint-stock Company, In Which The Members Agree, For The Better Securing Of His Bread To Each Shareholder, To Surrender The Liberty And Culture Of The Eater. The Virtue In Most Request Is Conformity. Self-reliance Is Its Aversion. It Loves Not Realities And Creators, But Names And Customs.

Great Is The Art, Great Be The Manners, Of The Bard. He Shall Not His Brain Encumber With The Coil Of Rhythm And Number; But, Leaving Rule And Pale Forethought, He Shall Aye Climb For His Rhyme. "pass In, Pass In," The Angels Say

All The Fairy Tales Of Aladdin, Or The Invisible Gyges, Or The Talisman That Opens Kings' Palaces, Or The Enchanted Halls Underground Or In The Sea, Are Only Fictions To Indicated The One Miracle Of Intellectual Enlargement.

Nature Has Her Own Best Mode Of Doing Each Thing, And She Has Somewhere Told It Plainly, If We Will Keep Our Eyes And Ears Open. If Not, She Will Not Be Slow In Undeceiving Us, When We Prefer Our Own Way To Hers.

The Good Judge Is Not He Who Does Hair-splitting Justice To Every Allegation, But Who, Aiming At Substantial Justice, Rules Something Intelligible Of The Guidance Of Suitors.

Creative Force, Like A Musical Composer, Goes On Unweariedly Repeating A Simple Air Or Theme, Now High, Now Low, In Solo, In Chorus, Ten Thousand Times Reverberated, Till It Fills Earth And Heaven With The Chant.

Men Lose Their Tempers In Defending Their Taste.

What You Persist In Doing Gets Easier. The Task Hasn't Changed, But Your Ability To Do It Has Increased.

Eating Disorder

In Self-trust All The Virtues Are Comprehended.

It Is Doubtless A Vice To Turn One's Eyes Inward Too Much, But I Am My Own Comedy And Tragedy.

The Mob Is Man Voluntarily Descending To The Nature Of The Beast.

It Is One Soul Which Animates All Men.

The Cities Drain The Country Of The Best Part Of Its Population: The Flower Of The Youth, Of Both Sexes, Goes Into The Towns, Andthe Country Is Cultivated By A So Much Inferior Class. The Land,--travel A Whole Day Together,--looks Poverty-stricken, And The Buildings Plain And Poor.

It Is The Eye Which Makes The Horizon.

When Good Is Near You, When You Have Life In Yourself, It Is Not By Any Known Or Accustomed Way; You Shall Not Discern The Foot-prints Of Any Other; You Shall Not See The Face Of Man; You Shall Not Hear Any Name; The Way, The Thought, The Good, Shall Be Wholly Strange And New. It Shall Exclude Example And Experience.

Would We Codify The Laws That Should Reign In Households, And Whose Daily Transgression Annoys And Mortifies Us, And Degrades Our Household Life, We Must Adorn Every Day With Sacrifices. Good Manners Are Made Up Of Petty Sacrifices.

Insist On Yourself. Never Imitate.

The Roses Under My Window Make No Reference To Former Roses Or Better Ones; They Are What They Are; They Exist With God Today. There Is No Time To Them. There Is Simply The Rose; It Is Perfect In Every Moment Of Its Existence.

Life Is Too Short To Waste.

Life Is Too Short

Foolish Consistencies Are The Hobgoblins Of Small Minds!

The Tempered Light Of The Woods Is Like A Perpetual Morning.

Truth Is The Property Of No Individual But Is The Treasure Of All Men.

If The Stars Should Appear One Night In A Thousand Years, How Would Men Believe And Adore; And Preserve For Many Generations The Remembrance Of The City Of God Which Had Been Shown! But Every Night Come Out These Envoys Of Beauty, And Light The Universe With Their Admonishing Smile.

All Nobility In Its Beginnings Was Somebody's Natural Superiority.

Where The Heart Is, There The Muses, There The Gods Sojourn, And Not In Any Geography Of Fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, And Boston Bay, You Think Paltry Places, And The Ear Loves Names Of Foreign And Classic Topography. But Here We Are; And, If We Tarry A Little, We May Come To Learn That Here Is Best. See To It, Only, That Thyself Is Here;--and Art And Nature, Hope And Fate, Friends, Angels, And The Supreme Being, Shall Not Absent From The Chamber Where Thou Sittest.

Government Has Been A Fossil: It Should Be A Plant.

Truth Is Too Simple For Us: We Do Not Like Those Who Unmask Our Illusions.

A Poem, A Sentence, Causes Us To See Ourselves. I Be, And I See My Being, At The Same Time.

Each Man Too Is A Tyrant In Tendency, Because He Would Impose His Idea On Others; And Their Trick Is Their Natural Defence. Jesuswould Absorb The Race; But Tom Paine Or The Coarsest Blasphemer Helps Humanity By Resisting This Exuberance Of Power.

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.

The Reliance On Authority Measures The Decline Of Religion, The Withdrawal Of The Soul.

Our Distrust Is Very Expensive.

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Carl Friedrich Gauss

Charles Evans Hughes

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