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Every Friend Whom Not Thy Fantastic Will But The Great And Tender Heart In Thee Craveth, Shall Lock Thee In His Embrace. And This Because The Heart In Thee Is The Heart Of All; Not A Valve, Not A Wall, Not An Intersection Is There Anywhere In Nature, But One Blood Rolls Uninterruptedly In Endless Circulation Through All Men, As The Water Of The Globe Is All One Sea, And, Truly Seen, Its Tide Is One.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every Friend Whom Not

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Every Friend Whom Not Thy Fantastic Will But The Great And Tender Heart In Thee Craveth, Shall Lock Thee In His Embrace. And This Because The Heart In Thee Is The Heart Of All; Not A Valve, Not A Wall, Not An Intersection Is There Anywhere In Nature, But One Blood Rolls Uninterruptedly In Endless Circulation Through All Men, As The Water Of The Globe Is All One Sea, And, Truly Seen, Its Tide Is One.

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We First Share The Life By Which Things Exist, And Afterwards See Them As Appearances In Nature, And Forget That We Have Shared Their Cause.

If I Know Your Sect, I Anticipate Your Argument

We Shall One Day Learn To Supersede Politics By Education. What We Call Our Root-and-branch Reforms Of Slavery, War, Gambling, Intemperance, Is Only Medicating The Symptoms. We Must Begin Higher Up, Namely, In Education.

You Cannot Hide Any Secret. If The Artist Succor His Flagging Spirits By Opium Or Wine, His Work Will Characterize Itself As The Effect Of Opium Or Wine. If You Make A Picture Or A Statue, It Sets The Beholder In That State Of Mind You Had When You Made It. If You Spend For Show, On Building, Or Gardening, Or On Pictures, Or On Equipages, It Will So Appear. We Are All Physiognomists And Penetrators Of Character, And Things Themselves Are Detective.

But Wise Men Pierce This Rotten Diction And Fasten Words Again To Visible Things; So That Picturesque Language Is At Once A Commanding Certificate That He Who Employs It, Is A Man In Alliance With Truth And God.

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.

Nobody Is Glad In The Gladness Of Another, And Our System Is One Of War, Of An Injurious Superiority. Every Child Of The Saxon Race Is Educated To Wish To Be First. It Is Our System; And A Man Comes To Measure His Greatness By The Regrets, Envies, And Hatreds Of His Competitors.

We Are Amphibious Creatures, Weaponed For Two Elements, Having Two Sets Of Faculties, The Particular And The Catholic.

When Summer Opens, I See How Fast It Matures, And Fear It Will Be Short; But After The Heats Of July And August, I Am Reconciled, Like One Who Has Had His Swing, To The Cool Of Autumn.

Happy Is The House That Shelters A Friend.

There Are Men Who, By Their Sympathetic Attractions, Carry Nations With Them, And Lead The Activity Of The Human Race.

Slavery Is No Scholar, No Improver; It Does Not Love The Whistle Of The Railroad; It Does Not Love The Newspaper, The Mailbag, A College, A Book Or A Preacher Who Has The Absurd Whim Of Saying What He Thinks; It Does Not Increase The White Population; It Does Not Improve The Soil; Everything Goes To Decay.

It Is The Secret Of The World That All Things Subsist And Do Not Die, But Only Retire A Little From Sight And Afterward Return Again.

Life Is To Be Lived, Not Controlled.

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.

Yet A Man May Love A Paradox, Without Losing Either His Wit Or His Honesty.

By The Irresistible Maturing Of The General Mind, The Christian Traditions Have Lost Their Hold.

Heaven Often Protects Valuable Souls Charged With Great Secrets, Great Ideas, By Long Shutting Them Up With Their Own Thoughts.

Good As Is Discourse, Silence Is Better, And Shames It. The Length Of The Discourse Indicates The Distance Of Thought Betwixt The Speaker And The Hearer. If They Were At A Perfect Understanding In Any Part, No Words Would Be Necessary Thereon. If At One In All Parts, No Words Would Be Suffered.

That Which We Call Character Is A Reserved Force Which Acts Directly By Presence, And Without Means. It Is Conceived Of As A Certain Undemonstrable Force, A Familiar Or Genius, By Whose Impulses The Man Is Guided, But Whose Counsels He Cannot Impart.

The Great Man Is Not Convulsible Or Tormentable; Events Pass Over Him Without Much Impression.

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

Meek Young Men Grow Up In Libraries, Believing It Their Duty To Accept The Views Which Cicero, Which Locke, Which Bacon, Have Given, Forgetful That Cicero, Locke, And Bacon Were Only Young Men In Libraries, When They Wrote These Books.

God Hid The Whole World In Thy Heart.

We Must Be Our Own Before We Can Be Another's.

The First Steps In Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those First Steps Which The Farmer, The Hunter, And The Sailor Take,) Teach That Nature's Dice Are Always Loaded; That In Her Heaps And Rubbish Are Concealed Sure And Useful Results.

Truth Is Beautiful, Without Doubt; But So Are Lies.

Better Be A Nettle In The Side Of Your Friend Than His Echo.

The Only Way To Have A Friend Is To Be One.

Faith Makes Us, And Not We It; And Faith Makes Its Own Forms.

The Sea, Washing The Equator And The Poles, Offers Its Perilous Aid, And The Power And Empire That Follow It... ''beware Of Me,'' It Says, ''but If You Can Hold Me, I Am The Key To All The Lands.

Perpetual Modernism Is The Measure Of Merit In Every Work Of Art.

All Public Facts Are To Be Individualized, All Private Facts Are To Be Generalized.

A Poet Is No Rattlebrain, Saying What Comes Uppermost, And, Because He Says Every Thing, Saying, At Last, Something Good; But A Heart In Unison With His Time And Country. There Is Nothing Whimsical Or Fantastic In His Production, But Sweet And Sad Earnest, Freighted With The Weightiest Convictions, And Pointed With The Most Determined Aim Which Any Man Or Class Knows Of In His Times.

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.

Open The Doors Of Opportunity To Talent And Virtue And They Will Do Themselves Justice, And Property Will Not Be In Bad Hands.

It Is Very Unhappy, But Too Late To Be Helped, The Discovery We Have Made, That We Exist

Speech Is Better Than Silence; Silence Is Better Than Speech.

There Is No Privacy That Cannot Be Penetrated. No Secret Can Be Kept In The Civilized World. Society Is A Masked Ball Where Everyone Hides His Real Character, Then Reveals It By Hiding

I Have Just Been Conversing With One Man, To Whom No Weight Of Adverse Experience Will Make It For A Moment Appear Impossible That Thousands Of Human Beings Might Exercise Towards Each Other The Grandest And Simplest Sentiments, As Well As A Knot Of Friends, Or A Pair Of Lovers.

Every Man Alone Is Sincere. At The Entrance Of A Second Person, Hypocrisy Begins. We Parry And Fend The Approach Of Our Fellow-man By Compliments, By Gossip, By Amusements, By Affairs. We Cover Up Our Thought From Him Under A Hundred Folds.

Meek Young Men Grow Up In Libraries.

The Arts And Inventions Of Each Period Are Only Its Costume, And Do Not Invigorate Men.

Every Hero Becomes A Bore At Last.

The Hero Is Not Fed On Sweets, Daily His Own Heart He Eats; Chambers Of The Great Are Jails, And Head-winds Right For Royal Sails.

I Find The Englishman To Be Him Of All Men Who Stands Firmest In His Shoes. They Have In Themselves What They Value In Their Horses, Mettle And Bottom.

A Cheerful Intelligent Face Is The End Of Culture, And Success Enough. For It Indicates The Purpose Of Nature And Wisdom Attained.

There Is This To Be Said In Favor Of Drinking, That It Takes The Drunkard First Out Of Society, Then Out Of The World.

Many A Man Had Taken The First Step. With Every Additional Step You Enhance Immensely The Value Of Your First.

Our Chief Want In Life, Is, Someone Who Shall Make Us Do What We Can. This Is The Service Of A Friend. With Him We Are Easily Great.

All Goes To Show That The Soul In Man Is Not An Organ, But Animates And Exercises All The Organs; Is Not A Function, Like The Power Of Memory, Of Calculation, Of Comparison, But Uses These As Hands And Feet; Is Not A Faculty, But A Light, Is Not The Intellect Or The Will, But The Master Of The Intellect And The Will; Is The Background Of Our Being, In Which They Lie,--an Immensity Not Possessed And That Cannot Be Possessed.

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.

There Is A Persuasion In The Soul Of Man That He Is Here For Cause, That He Was Put Down In This Place By The Creator To Do The Work For Which He Inspires Him, That Thus He Is An Overmatch For All Antagonists That Could Combine Against Him.

So Much Of Our Time Is Spent In Preparation, So Much In Routine, And So Much In Retrospect, That The Amount Of Each Person's Genius Is Confined To A Very Few Hours.

To Believe In Luck ... Is Skepticism.

Solvency Is Maintained By Means Of A National Debt, On The Principle, "if You Will Not Lend Me The Money, How Can I Pay You?"

Plant Your Dreams And Miracles Will Grow.

Skepticism Is Unbelief In Cause And Effect. A Man Does Not See, That, As He Eats, So He Thinks: As He Deals, So He Is, And So He Appears; He Does Not See That His Son Is The Son Of His Thoughts And Of His Actions; That Fortunes Are Not Exceptions But Fruits; That Relation And Connection Are Not Somewhere And Sometimes, But Everywhere And Always; No Miscellany, No Exemption, No Anomaly,--but Method, And An Even Web; And What Comes Out, That Was Put In.

I Give You Joy Of Your Free And Brave Thought. I Have Great Joy In It. I Find Incomparable Things Said Incomparably Well, As They Must Be. I Find The Courage Of Treatment Which So Delights Us, And Which Large Perception Only Can Inspire.

The Adventitious Beauty Of Poetry May Be Felt In The Greater Delight With A Verse Given In A Happy Quotation Than In The Poem.

Genius Is The Power To Labor Better And More Availably. Deserve Thy Genius: Exalt It.

The President Proclaims War, And Those Senators Who Dissent Are Not Those Who Know Better, But Those Who Can Afford To...democracy Becomes A Government Of Bullies Tempered By Editors.

Where The Banana Grows Man Is Sensual And Cruel.

In My Utter Impotence To Test The Authenticity Of The Report Of My Senses, To Know Whether The Impressions They Make On Me Correspond With Outlying Objects, What Difference Does It Make, Whether Orion Is Up There In Heaven, Or Some God Paints The Image In The Firmament Of The Soul?

The Soul Is The Perceiver And Revealer Of Truth. We Know Truth When We See It, Let Skeptic And Scoffer Say What They Choose.

The Cannon Will Not Suffer Any Other Sound To Be Heard For Miles And For Years Around It.

He Walks Abreast With His Days And Feels No Shame In Not 'studying A Profession', For He Does Not Postpone His Life, But Lives Already. He Has Not One Chance, But A Hundred Chances.

Therefore Is Nature Ever The Ally Of Religion: Lends Her All Her Pomp And Riches To The Religious Sentiment.

Go Oft To The House Of Thy Friend, For Weeds Choke The Unused Path.

All My Hurts My Garden Spade Can Heal.

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.

Freedom Has Nothing To Do With Having The Right To Vote For Your Oppressor; Freedom Is Not Having Any Form Of Oppression.

Beware Of What You Want-for You Will Get It.

Meet Your Failure Nobly, And It Will Not Differ From Success.

Harmony Of Aim, Not Identity Of Conclusion, Is The Secret Of Sympathetic Life.

My Good Hoe As It Bites The Ground Revenges My Wrongs, And I Have Less Lust To Bite My Enemies. In The Smoothing The Rough Hillocks, I Smooth My Temper.

Every Man Believes That He Has Greater Possibilities.

Our Country, Customs, Laws, Our Ambitions, And Our Notions Of Fit And Fair-all These We Never Made; We Found Them Ready-made; We But Quote From Them. What Would Remain To Me If This Art Of Appropriation Were Derogatory To Genius? Every One Of My Writings Has Been Furnished To Me By A Thousand Different Persons, A Thousand Things; Wise And Foolish Have Brought Me, Without Suspecting It, The Offering Of Their Thoughts, Faculties, And Experience. My Work Is An Aggregation Of Beings Taken From The Whole Of Nature. It Bears The Name Of Goethe.

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

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

As The Sandwich Islander Believes That The Strength And Valor Of The Enemy He Kills Passes Into Himself, So We Gain The Strength Of The Temptation We Resist.

We Early Arrive At The Great Discovery That There Is One Mind Common To All Individual Men: That What Is Individual Is Less Than What Is Universalthat Error, Vice And Disease Have Their Seat In The Superficial Or Individual Nature.

It Is Time To Be Old To Take In Sail.

Beware When The Great God Lets Loose A Thinker On This Planet.

The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zigzag Line Of A Hundred Tacks. See The Line From A Sufficient Distance And It Straightens Itself To The Average Tendency.

When We Have Arrived At The Question, The Answer Is Already Near.

Nothing In Nature Is Exhausted In Its First Use...in God, Every End Is Converted Into A New Means.

The Best Lightning Rod For Your Protection Is Your Own Spine.

We Do What We Must, And Call It By The Best Names We Can, And Would Fain Have The Praise Of Having Intended The Result Which Ensues.

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.

Every Man Is Eloquent Once In His Life.

Public Speaking

Walking Has The Best Value As Gymnastics Of The Mind.

We Grizzle Every Day. I See No Need Of It. Whilst We Converse With What Is Above Us, We Do Not Grow Old, But Grow Young.

If A Man Is At Heart Just, Then In So Far Is He God; The Safety Of God, The Immortality Of God, The Majesty Of God Do Enter Into That Man With Justice.

Fine Manners Need The Support Of Fine Manners In Others.

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.

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.

Genius Is Always Sufficiently The Enemy Of Genius By Over Influence. The Literature Of Every Nation Bear Me Witness. The English Dramatic Poets Have Shakspearized Now For Two Hundred Years.

We Know Who Is Benevolent, By Quite Other Means Than The Amount Of Subscriptions To Soup-societies. It Is Only Low Merits That Canbe Enumerated.

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.

Pride Can Go Without Domestics, Without Fine Clothes, Can Live In A House With Two Rooms, Can Eat Potato, Purslain, Beans, Lyed Corn, Can Work On The Soil, Can Travel Afoot, Can Talk With Poor Men, Or Sit Silent Well Contented With Fine Saloons. But Vanity Costs Money, Labor, Horses, Men, Women, Health And Peace, And Is Still Nothing At Last; A Long Way Leading Nowhere.--only One Drawback; Proud People Are Intolerably Selfish, And The Vain Are Gentle And Giving.

In Every Landscape, The Point Of Astonishment Is The Meeting Of The Sky And The Earth, And That Is Seen From The First Hillock Aswell As From The Top Of The Alleghanies. The Stars At Night Stoop Down Over The Brownest, Homeliest Common, With All The Spiritual Magnificence Which They Shed On The Campagna, Or On The Marble Deserts Of Egypt.

Coal Is A Portable Climate. It Carries The Heat Of The Tropics To Labrador And The Polar Circle; And It Is The Means Of Transporting Itself Whithersoever It Is Wanted. Watt And Stephenson Whispered In The Ear Of Mankind Their Secret, That A Half-ounce Of Coal Will Draw Two Tons A Mile, And Coal Carries Coal, By Rail And By Boat, To Make Canada As Warm As Calcutta, And With Its Comfort Brings Its Industrial Power.

Be Yourself; No Base Imitator Of Another, But Your Best Self.

The Escape From All False Ties; Courage To Be What We Are; And Love Of What Is Simple And Beautiful; Independence, And Cheerful Relation, These Are The Essentials.

The Earth Is A Machine Which Yields Almost Gratuitous Service To Every Application Of Intellect. Every Plant Is A Manufacturer Of Soil. In The Stomach Of The Plant Development Begins. The Tree Can Draw On The Whole Air, The Whole Earth, On All The Rolling Main. The Plant Is All Suction-pipe,--imbibing From The Ground By Its Root, From The Air By Its Leaves, With All Its Might.

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.

All Vigor Is Contagious.

When The Boys Come Into My Yard For Leave To Gather Horse-chestnuts, I Own I Enter Into Nature's Game, And Affect To Grant The Permission Reluctantly, Fearing That Any Moment They Will Find Out The Imposture Of That Showy Chaff. But This Tenderness Is Quite Unnecessary; The Enchantments Are Laid On Very Thick. Their Young Life Is Thatched With Them. Bare And Grim To Tears Is The Lot Of The Children In The Hovel I Saw Yesterday; Yet Not The Less They Hang It Round With Frippery Romance, Like The Children Of The Happiest Fortune.

Is Not Prayer A Study Of Truth, A Sally Of The Soul Into The Unfound Infinite? No Man Ever Prayed Heartily Without Learning Something.

I Like People Who Can Do Things

Earth's A Howling Wilderness, Truculent With Fraud And Force.

I Think No Virtue Goes With Size.

I Thought As I Rode In The Cold Pleasant Light Of Sunday Morning How Silent & Passive Nature Offers, Every Morn, Her Wealth To Man; She Is Immensely Rich, He Is Welcome To Her Entire Goods, Which He Speaks No Word, Only Leaves Over Doors Ajar, Hall, Store Room, & Cellar. He May Do As He Will: If He Takes Her Hint & Uses Her Goods, She Speaks No Word; If He Blunders & Starves, She Says Nothing.

We Are Sure That, Though We Know Not How, Necessity Does Comport With Liberty, The Individual With The World, My Polarity With Thespirit Of The Times. The Riddle Of The Age Has For Each A Private Solution.

I Think I Have Done Well, If I Have Acquired A New Word From A Good Author; And My Business With Him Is To Find My Own, Though Itwere Only To Melt Him Down Into An Epithet Or An Image For Daily Use.

It Behooves Us To Be Careful What We Worship, For What We Are Worshipping We Are Becoming.

Love Is Like A Hunter, Who Cares Not For The Game When Once Caught, Which He May Have Pursued With The Most Intense And Breathless Eagerness. Love Is Strongest In Pursuit; Friendship In Possession.

Artists Must Be Sacrificed To Their Art.

How Much We Forgive To Those Who Yield Us The Rare Spectacle Of Heroic Manners! We Will Pardon Them The Want Of Books, Or Arts, And Even Of Gentler Virtues. How Tenaciously We Remember Them!

Is There A Difference? Yes. We Are In Harmony With Nature, But Never At Peace.

If A Man Fasten His Attention On A Single Aspect Of Truth And Apply Himself To That Alone For A Long Time, The Truth Becomes Distorted And Not Itself But Falsehood.

American Mind A Wilderness Of Opportunities.

Everything Good Is On The Highway.

Proverbs, Like The Sacred Books Of Each Nation, Are The Sanctuary Of The Intuitions. That Which The Droning World, Chained To Appearances, Will Not Allow The Realist To Say In His Own Words, It Will Suffer Him To Say In Proverbs Without Contradiction.

Speak What You Think Today In Hard Words And Tomorrow Speak What Tomorrow Thinks In Hard Words Again, Though It Contradict Every Thing You Said Today.

Shallow Men Believe In Luck.

Nature Is Full Of Freaks, And Now Puts An Old Head On Young Shoulders, And Then Takes A Young Heart Heating Under Fourscore Winters.

People Suffer All Their Life Long, Under The Foolish Superstition That They Can Be Cheated. But It Is Impossible For A Person To Be Cheated By Anyone But Himself.

The Intellectual Life May Be Kept Clean And Healthful, If Man Will Live The Life Of Nature, And Not Import Into His Mind Difficulties Which Are None Of His.

The Last Change In Our Point Of View Gives The Whole World A Pictorial Air.

Teach Me Your Mood, O Patient Stars. Who Climb Each Night, The Ancient Sky. Leaving On Space No Shade, No Scars, No Trace Of Age, No Fear To Die.

The Poet's Habit Of Living Should Be Set On A Key So Low That The Common Influences Should Delight Him.

Humility Is The Secret Of The Wise.

Nor Sequent Centuries Could Hitorbit And Sum Of Shakespeare's Wit.

I Dream Of A Better Tomorrow, Where Chickens Can Cross The Road And Not Be Questioned About Their Motives.

Little Thinks, In The Field, Yon Red-cloaked Clown, Of Thee, From The Hill-top Looking Down; And The Heifer, That Lows In The Upland Farm, Far-heard, Lows Not Thine Ear To Charm; The Sexton Tolling The Bell At Noon, Dreams Not That Great Napoleon Sto

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

It Is Plain That There Is No Separate Essence Called Courage, No Cup Or Cell In The Brain, No Vessel In The Heart Containing Drops Or Atoms That Make Or Give This Virtue; But It Is The Right Or Healthy State Of Every Man, When He Is Free To Do That Which Is Constitutional To Him To Do.

Power Is In Nature The Essential Measure Of Right.

Ability Without Honor Has No Value.

There Is A Property In The Horizon Which No Man Has, But He Whose Eyes Can Integrate All The Parts,--that Is, The Poet.

Let The Soul Be Assured That Somewhere In The Universe It Should Rejoin Its Friend, And It Would Be Content And Cheerful Alone For A Thousand Years.

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.

The Hand That Rounded Peter's Dome, And Groined The Aisles Of Christian Rome, Wrought In A Sad Sincerity; Himself From God He Could Not Free; He Builded Better Than He Knew: The Conscious Stone To Beauty Grew.

I Cannot Remember The Books I've Read Any More Than The Meals I Have Eaten; Even So, They Have Made Me.

There Is A Good Ear, In Some Men, That Draws Supplies To Virtue Out Of Very Indifferent Nutriment.

A Beautiful Woman Is A Picture Which Drives All Beholders Nobly Mad.

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

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.

Daughter Of Heaven And Earth, Coy Spring, With Sudden Passion Languishing, Teaching Barren Moors To Smile, Painting Pictures Mile On Mile, Holds A Cup Of Cowslip Wreaths Whence A Smokeless Incense Breathes.

Desire Is Possibility Seeking Expression.

There Is No Better Way To Exercise The Imagination Than The Study Of The Law.

Rude Poets Of The Tavern Hearth, Squandering Your Unquoted Mirth, Which Keeps The Ground, And Never Soars, While Jake Retorts, And Reuben Roars; Tough And Screaming, As Birch-bark, Goes Like Bullet To Its Mark; While The Solid Curse And Jeer Never Balk The Waiting Ear.

Everything In Creation Has Its Appointed Painter Or Poet And Remains In Bondage Like The Princess In The Fairy Tale 'til Its Appropriate Liberator Comes To Set It Free.

Never Lose An Opportunity To See Anything That Is Beautiful. It Is God's Handwriting A Wayside Sacrament. Welcome It In Every Fair Face, Every Fair Sky, Every Fair Flower.

The Effects Of Opposition Are Wonderful. There Are Men Who Rise Refreshed On Hearing Of A Threat, Men To Whom A Crisis, Which Intimidates And Paralyzes The Majority, Comes As Graceful And Beloved As A Bride!

You Can Take Better Care Of Your Secret Than Another Can.

Astronomy Taught Us Our Insignificance In Nature.

Nature Is Upheld By Antagonism.

A Friend Is A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere. Before Him I May Think Aloud.

I Like The Church, I Like A Cowl, I Love A Prophet Of The Soul; And On My Heart Monastic Aisles Fall Like Sweet Strains Or Pensive Smiles; Yet Not For All His Faith Can See, Would I That Cowled Churchman Be.

The Moment We Indulge Our Affections, The Earth Is Metamorphosed.

Why Need I Volumes, If One Word Suffice?

The Path Of Things Is Silent. Will They Suffer A Speaker To Go With Them?

Life Only Avails, Not The Having Lived.

Great Men Are Sincere.

The Rain Comes When The Wind Calls.

Earth Proudly Wears The Parthenon As The Best Gem Upon Her Zone.

Besides The General Infusion Of Wit To Heighten Civility, The Direct Splendor Of Intellectual Power Is Ever Welcome In Fine Society, As The Costliest Addition To Its Rule And Its Credit.

Every Word Was Once A Poem.

Who Shall Set A Limit To The Influence Of A Human Being? There Are Men, Who, By Their Sympathetic Attractions, Carry Nations Withthem, And Lead The Activity Of The Human Race. And If There Be Such A Tie, That, Wherever The Mind Of Man Goes, Nature Will Accompany Him, Perhaps There Are Men Whose Magnetisms Are Of That Force To Draw Material And Elemental Powers, And, Where They Appear, Immense Instrumentalities Organize Around Them.

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

Music And Wine Are One.

A Few Years Ago, The Liberal Churches Complained That The Calvinistic Church Denied To Them The Name Of Christian. I Think The Complaint Was Confession; A Religious Church Would Not Complain.

What Is Originality? It Is Being One's Self, And Reporting Accurately What We See And Are.

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

Words You Speak

When You Have Worn Out Your Shoes, The Strength Of The Show Fiber Has Passed Into Your Body.

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.

The Man Of Genius Inspires Us With A Boundless Confidence In Our Own Powers.

He Cannot Be Happy And Strong Until He Too Lives With Nature In The Present, Above Time.

To Laugh Often And Love Much; To Win The Respect Of Intelligent Persons And The Affection Of Children; To Earn The Approbation Of Honest Critics And Endure The Betrayal Of False Friends; To Appreciate Beauty.

Let Him Be Great, And Love Shall Follow Him.

There Is Really No Insurmountable Barrier Save Your Own Inherent Weakness Of Purpose.

Sunshine Cannot Bleach The Snow, Nor Time Unmake What Poets Know

The Greatest Discoveries Are Those That Shed Light Unto Ourselves.

This Body, Full Of Faults, Has Yet One Great Quality: Whatever It Encounters In This Temporal Life Depends Upon One's Actions.

The Happiest Man Is He Who Learns From Nature The Lesson Of Worship

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.

Let Not A Man Guard His Dignity, But Let His Dignity Guard Him.

The Public Values The Invention More Than The Inventor Does. The Inventor Knows There Is Much More And Better Where This Came From.

There Was Never A Man Born So Wise Or Good, But One Or More Companions Came Into The World With Him, Who Delight In His Faculty, And Report It. I Cannot See Without Awe, That No Man Thinks Alone And No Man Acts Alone, But The Divine Assessors Who Came Up With Him Into Life,--now Under One Disguise, Now Under Another,--like A Police In Citizen's Clothes, Walk With Him, Step For Step, Through All Kingdoms Of Time.

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

It Is Very Odd That Nature Should Be So Unscrupulous. She Is No Saint . . .

Let Us Advance On Chaos And The Dark

A Woman's Strength Is The Unresistible Might Of Weakness.

An Action Is The Perfection And Publication Of Thought.

There Is A Relation Between The Hours Of Our Life And The Centuries Of Time. As The Air I Breathe Is Drawn From The Great Repositories Of Nature, As The Light On My Book Is Yielded By A Star A Hundred Millions Of Miles Distant, As The Poise Of My Body Depends On The Equilibrium Of Centrifugal And Centripetal Forces, So The Hours Should Be Instructed By The Ages And The Ages Explained By The Hours.

Life Is A Festival Only To The Wise. Seen From The Nook And Chimneyside Of Prudence, It Wears A Ragged And Dangerous Front.

Infancy Conforms To Nobody; All Conform To It.

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