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I Am Ashamed To See What A Shallow Village Tale Our So-called History Is. How Many Times Must We Say Rome, And Paris, And Constantinople! What Does Rome Know Of Rat And Lizard? What Are Olympiads And Consulates To These Neighboring Systems Of Being? Nay, What Food Or Experience Or Succor Have They For The Esquimaux Seal-hunter, Or The Kanaka In His Canoe, For The Fisherman, The Stevedore, The Porter?

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Am Ashamed To

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

I Am Ashamed To See What A Shallow Village Tale Our So-called History Is. How Many Times Must We Say Rome, And Paris, And Constantinople! What Does Rome Know Of Rat And Lizard? What Are Olympiads And Consulates To These Neighboring Systems Of Being? Nay, What Food Or Experience Or Succor Have They For The Esquimaux Seal-hunter, Or The Kanaka In His Canoe, For The Fisherman, The Stevedore, The Porter?

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Cities Degrade Us By Magnifying Trifles.

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

The Whole Value Of The Dime Is In Knowing What To Do With It.

The Greek Epigram Intimates That The Force Of Love Is Not Shown By The Courting Of Beauty, But Where The Like Desire Is Inflamed For One Who Is Ill-favored.

The Relations Of The Soul To The Divine Spirit Are So Pure, That It Is Profane To Seek To Interpose Helps.

The World Always Had The Same Bankrupt Look, To Foregoing Ages As To Us.

Bring Me Wine, But Wine Which Never Grew In The Belly Of The Grape

Let The Bird Sing Without Deciphering The Song.

The House Praises The Carpenter.

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

Men Of Extraordinary Success, In Their Honest Moments, Have Always Sung, "not Unto Us, Not Unto Us." According To The Faith Of Their Times, They Have Built Altars To Fortune, Or To Destiny, Or To St. Julian. Their Success Lay In Their Parallelism To The Course Of Thought, Which Found In Them An Unobstructed Channel; And The Wonders Of Which They Were The Visible Conductors Seemed To Their Eye Their Deed.

A Creative Economy Is The Fuel Of Magnificence.

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

We Do Not Yet Trust The Unknown Powers Of Thought. Whence Came All These Tools, Inventions, Book Laws, Parties, Kingdoms? Out Of The Invisible World, Through A Few Brains. The Arts And Institutions Of Men Are Created Out Of Thought. The Powers That Make The Capitalist Are Metaphysical, The Force Of Method And Force Of Will Makes Trade, And Builds Towns.

Make Yourself Necessary To The World, And Mankind Will Give You Bread.

When It Is Darkest, We Can See The Stars.

Suicide Inspirational

A Man Should Learn To Detect And Watch That Gleam Of Light Which Flashes Across His Mind From Within, More Than The Lustre Of The Firmament Of Bards And Sages. Yet He Dismisses Without Notice His Thought, Because It Is His. In Every Work Of Genius We Recognize Our Own Rejected Thoughts: They Come Back To Us With A Certain Alienated Majesty.

We Can Only Obey Our Own Polarity.

If I Should Go Out Of Church Whenever I Hear A False Sentiment, I Could Never Stay There Five Minutes.

Talent Is Commonly Developed At The Expense Of Character.

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.

I Like My Boy With His Endless Sweet Soliloquies And Iterations And His Utter Inability To Conceive Why I Should Not Leave All My Nonsense, Business, And Writing And Come To Tie Up His Toy Horse, As If There Was Or Could Be Any End To Nature Beyond His Horse. And He Is Wiser Than We When [he] Threatens His Whole Threat "i Will Not Love You."

A Little Praise Goes A Great Ways.

But In Our Experience, Man Is Cheap And Friendship Wants Its Deep Sense. We Affect To Dwell With Our Friends In Their Absence, But We Do Not; When Deed, Word, Or Letter Comes Not, They Let Us Go.

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

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.

Living Without Laughing Isn't Living. Be Silly. Be Honest. Be Kind.

A Sage Is The Instructor Of A Hundred Ages.

The Intellect Is Vagabond, And Our System Of Education Fosters Restlessness. Our Minds Travel When Our Bodies Are Forced To Stay At Home. We Imitate; And What Is Imitation But The Travelling Of The Mind?

An Eye Can Threaten Like A Loaded And Levelled Gun, Or It Can Insult Like Hissing Or Kicking; Or, In Its Altered Mood, By Beams Of Kindness, It Can Make The Heart Dance For Joy. ... One Of The Most Wonderful Things In Nature Is A Glance Of The Eye; It Transcends Speech; It Is The Bodily Symbol Of Identity.

Duty Grows Everywhere--like Children, Like Grass.

History - A Biography Of A Few Stout And Earnest Persons

When The Eyes Say One Thing, And The Tongue Another, A Practiced Man Relies On The Language Of The First.

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.

What Is It Men Love In Genius, But Its Infinite Hope, Which Degrades All It Has Done? Genius Counts All Its Miracles Poor And Short. Its Own Idea It Never Executed.

But Your Isolation Must Not Be Mechanical, But Spiritual, That Is, Must Be Elevation.

Two May Talk And One May Hear, But Three Cannot Take Part In A Conversation Of The Most Sincere And Searching Sort.

Universally, The Better Gold The Worse Man. The Political Economist Defies Us To Show Any Gold Mine Country That Is Traversed By Good Roads, Or A Shore Where Pearls Are Found On Which Good Schools Are Erected.

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.

A Little Integrity Is Better Than Any Career.

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

An Artist Spends Himself Like The Crayon In His Hand, Till He Is All Gone.

But Every Jet Of Chaos Which Threatens To Exterminate Us Is Convertible By Intellect Into Wholesome Force. Fate Is Unpenetrated Causes.

It Is Time To Be Old To Take In Sail.

What We Have Learned From Other Becomes Our Own Reflection.

Of All Tools, An Observatory Is The Most Sublime. . . . What Is So Good In A College As An Observatory? The Sublime Attaches To The Door And To The First Stair You Ascent, That This Is The Road To The Stars.

Art Is The Path Of The Creator To His Work.

An Individual Has A Healthy Personality To The Exact Degree To Which They Have The Propensity To Look For The Good In Every Situation.

Progress Is The Activity Of Today And The Assurance Of Tomorrow

The Sun Is The Sole Inconsumable Fireand God Is The Sole Inexhaustible Giver.

The Problem Of Restoring To The World Original And Eternal Beauty Is Solved By Redemption Of The Soul.

Hospitality Consists In A Little Fire, A Little Food, And An Immense Quiet

Adult Males Are What Their Moms Designed Them.

Things Admit Of Being Used As Symbols, Because Nature Is A Symbol, In The Whole, And In Every Part.

We Don't Grow Old. When We Cease To Grow, We Become Old.

The Hero Is Suffered To Be Himself.

Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit. To A Man Laboring Under Calamity, The Heat Of His Own Fire Hath Sadness In It.

Things Are Pretty, Graceful, Rich, Elegant, Handsome, But, Until They Speak To The Imagination, Not Yet Beautiful.

Wherever There Is Failure, There Is Some Giddiness, Some Superstition About Luck, Some Step Omitted, Which, Nature Never Pardons.

Money Often Costs Too Much, And Power And Pleasure Are Not Cheap.

A Man Complained That On His Way Home To Dinner He Had Every Day To Pass Through That Long Field Of His Neighbor's. I Advised Him To Buy It, And It Would Never Seem Long Again.

Things Are In The Saddle. And Ride Mankind.

Transcendentalism

It Makes A Great Difference In The Force Of A Sentence, Whether A Man Be Behind It Or No.

If Man Has Good Corn, Or Wood, Or Boards, Or Pigs To Sell, Or Can Make Better Chairs Or Knives, Crucibles, Or Church Organs, Than Anybody Else, You Will Find A Broad, Hard-beaten Road To His House, Though It Be In The Woods.

The Colleges, While They Provide Us With Libraries, Furnish No Professors Of Books; And I Think No Chair Is So Much Needed.

The World Is Always Childish, And With Each New Gewgaw Of A Revolution Or New Constitution That It Finds, Thinks It Shall Never Cry Any More.

From Within Or From Behind, A Light Shines Through Us Upon Things, And Makes Us Aware That We Are Nothing, But The Light Is All.

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

And The Glory Of Character Is In Affronting The Horrors Of Depravity To Draw Thence New Nobilities Of Power: As Art Lives And Thrills In New Use And Combining Of Contrasts, And Mining Into The Dark Evermore For Blacker Pits Of Night.

A Poem Is Made Up Of Thoughts, Each Of Which Filled The Whole Sky Of The Poet In Its Turn.

What Has Been Done In The World - The Works Of Genius - Cost Nothing. There Is No Painful Effort, But It Is The Spontaneous Flowing Of The Thought. Shakespeare Made His Hamlet As A Bird Weaves Its Nest.

Beauty Brings Its Own Fancy Price, For All That A Man Hath Will He Give For His Love.

And What Avails It That Science Has Come To Treat Space And Time As Simply Forms Of Thought, And The Material World As Hypothetical, And Withal Our Pretension Of Property And Even Of Self-hood Are Fading With The Rest, If, At Last, Even Our Thoughts Are Not Finalities, But The Incessant Flowing And Ascension Reach These Also, And Each Thought Which Yesterday Was A Finality, To-day Is Yielding To A Larger Generalization?

A Forte Always Makes A Foible.

The Most Active Lives Have So Much Routine As To Preclude Progress Almost Equally With The Most Inactive.

Insist On Your Life, Never Imitate... Do That Which Is Assigned To You, And You Cannot Hope Too Much Or Dare Too Much.

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

If You Would Lift Me Up You Must Be On Higher Ground.

Converse With A Mind That Is Grandly Simple, And Literature Looks Like Word-catching. The Simplest Utterances Are Worthiest To Bewritten, Yet Are They So Cheap, And So Things Of Course, That, In The Infinite Riches Of The Soul, It Is Like Gathering A Few Pebbles Off The Ground, Or Bottling A Little Air In A Phial, When The Whole Earth And The Whole Atmosphere Are Ours.

Life Is Our Dictionary.

Alas For America As I Must So Often Say, The Ungirt, The Diffuse, The Profuse, Procumbent, One Wide Ground Juniper, Out Of Which No Cedar, No Oak Will Rear Up A Mast To The Clouds! It All Runs To Leaves, To Suckers, To Tendrils, To Miscellany. The Air Is Loaded With Poppy, With Imbecility, With Dispersion, & Sloth.

Or Whipping Its Rough Surface For A Trout.

Painting Was Called Silent Poetry And Poetry Speaking Painting.

I Do Not Speak With Any Fondness But The Language Of Coolest History, When I Say That Boston Commands Attention As The Town Whichwas Appointed In The Destiny Of Nations To Lead The Civilization Of North America.

Life Is Very Narrow. Bring Any Club Or Company Of Intelligent Men Together Again After Ten Years, And If The Presence Of Some Penetrating And Calming Genius Could Dispose Them To Frankness, What A Confession Of Insanities Would Come Up!

I Will No Longer Confer, Differ, Refer, Defer, Prefer, Or Suffer. I Renounce The Whole Tribe Of Fero. I Embrace Absolute Life.

Man Is A Stream Whose Source Is Hidden. Our Being Is Descending Into Us From We Know Not Whence.

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.

The Day Is Always His, Who Works In It With Serenity And Great Aims.

It Is Long Ere We Discover How Rich We Are. Our History, We Are Sure, Is Quite Tame: We Have Nothing To Write, Nothing To Infer. But Our Wiser Years Still Run Back To The Despised Recollections Of Childhood, And Always We Are Fishing Up Some Wonderful Article Out Of That Pond; Until, By And By, We Begin To Suspect That The Biography Of The One Foolish Person We Know Is, In Reality, Nothing Less Than The Miniature Paraphrase Of The Hundred Volumes Of The Universal History.

It In Every Fair Face, Every Fair Sky, Every Fair Flower.

Goodness That Preaches Undoes Itself.

Every Day, The Sun; And, After Sunset, Night And Her Stars. Ever The Winds Blow; Ever The Grass Grows. Every Day, Men And Women, Conversing, Beholding And Beholden. The Scholar Is He Of All Men Whom This Spectacle Most Engages. He Must Settle Its Value In His Mind. What Is Nature To Him?

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.

A Man's Style Is His Mind's Voice. Wooden Minds, Wooden Voices.

Undoubtedly We Have No Questions To Ask Which Are Unanswerable. We Must Trust The Perfection Of The Creation So Far, As To Believe That Whatever Curiosity The Order Of Things Has Awakened In Our Minds, The Order Of Things Can Satisfy. Every Man's Condition Is A Solution In Hieroglyphic To Those Inquiries He Would Put. He Acts It As Life, Before He Apprehends It As Truth.

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

Nor Sequent Centuries Could Hit Orbit And Sum Of Shakspeare's Wit. The Men Who Lived With Him Became Poets, For The Air Was Fame.

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.

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

Love Not The Flower They Pluck And Know It Not, And All Their Botany Is Latin Names.

The Genius Is A Genius By The First Look He Casts On Any Object. Is His Eye Creative? Does He Not Rest In Angles And Colors, But Beholds The Design,--he Will Presently Undervalue The Actual Object.

We Live By Our Imagination, Our Admirations, And Our Sentiments.

Higher Than The Question Of Our Duration Is The Question Of Our Deserving. Immortality Will Come To Such As Are Fit For It, And He Would Be A Great Soul In Future Must Be A Great Soul Now.

Experience Is The Only Teacher, And We Get His Lesson Indifferently In Any School.

The Statue Is Then Beautiful When It Begins To Be Incomprehensible, When It Is Passing Out Of Criticism, And Can No Longer Be Defined By Compass And Measuring-wand, But Demands An Active Imagination To Go With It, And To Say What It Is In The Act Of Doing.

When Its Errands Are Noble And Adequate, A Steamboat Bridging The Atlantic Between Old And New England, And Arriving At Its Ports With The Punctuality Of A Planet, Is A Step Of Man Into Harmony With Nature.

Our Faith Comes In Moments; Our Vice Is Habitual.

Eloquence Shows The Power And Possibility Of Man.

A Man Must Thank His Defects, And Stand In Some Terror Of His Talents.

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.

Our Life Is An Apprenticeship To The Truth That Around Every Circle Another Can Be Drawn; That There Is No End In Nature, But Every End Is A Beginning, And Under Every Deep A Lower Deep Opens.

The Eloquence Of One Stimulates All The Rest, Some Up To The Speaking-point, And All Others To A Degree That Makes Them Good Receivers And Conductors, And They Avenge Themselves For Their Enforced Silence By Increased Loquacity On Their Return.

Sleep Lingers All Our Lifetime About Our Eyes, As Night Hovers All Day In The Boughs Of The Fir-tree.

But A Compassion For That Which Is Not And Cannot Be Useful And Lovely, Is Degrading And Futile.

There Is Nothing But Is Related To Us, Nothing That Does Not Interest Us,--kingdom, College, Tree, Horse, Or Iron Show,--the Rootsof All Things Are In Man.

Liberty Is A Slow Fruit.

Only Those Books Come Down Which Deserve To Last . All The Gilt Edges, Vellum And Morocco, All The Presentation Copies To All The Libraries Will Not Preserve A Book In Circulation Beyond Its Intrinsic Date.

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 Things Taught In Schools & Colleges Are Not An Education But The Means Of Education.

The Oversoul Is Before Time, And Time, Father Of All Else, Is One Of His Children.

One Lesson We Learn Early, That In Spite Of Seeming Difference, Men Are All Of One Pattern. We Readily Assume This With Our Mates, And Are Disappointed And Angry If We Find That We Are Premature, And That Their Watches Are Slower Than Ours. In Fact, The Only Sin Which We Never Forgive In Each Other Is Difference Of Opinion.

The Genius Of Reading And Of Gardening Are Antagonistic, Like Resinous And Vitreous Electricity. One Is Concentrative In Sparks And Shocks: The Other Is Diffuse Strength; So That Each Disqualifies Its Workman For The Other's Duties.

All Life Is A Nap. The More Naps You Take The Better.

We Are Reformers In The Spring And Summer, But In Autumn We Stand By The Old. Reformers In The Morning, And Conservers At Night.

A Hero Is A Man Who Is Afraid To Run Away.

Nature Abhors The Old.

The Gods We Worship Write Their Names On Our Faces; Be Sure Of That. And A Man Will Worship Something ... That Which Dominates Will Determine His Life And Character. Therefore It Behooves Us To Be Careful What We Worship, For What We Are Worshipping We Are Becoming.

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.

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

Of Course, He Who Has Put Forth His Total Strength In Fit Actions, Has The Richest Return Of Wisdom.

Eloquence Shows The Power And Possibility Of Man. There Is One Of Whom We Took No Note, But On A Certain Occasion It Appears That He Has A Secret Virtue Never Suspected - That He Can Paint What Has Occurred And What Must Occur, With Such Clearness To A Company, As If They Saw It Done Before Their Eyes. By Leading Their Thought He Leads Their Will, And Can Make Them Do Gladly What An Hour Ago They Would Not Believe That They Could Be Led To Do At All.

Blessed Are Those Who Have No Talent!

Blessed Are Those

Invention Breeds Invention.

You've Got To Be Taught To Be Afraid Of People Whose Eyes Are Oddly Made And People Whose Skin Is A Different Shade.

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.

Finish Each Day Before You Begin The Next, And Interpose A Solid Wall Of Sleep Between The Two. This You Cannot Do Without Temperance.

Lovers Should Guard Their Strangeness. If They Forgive Too Much, All Slides Into Confusion And Meanness.

Make The Most Of Yourself, For That Is All There Is Of You.

I Have Never Met A Man Who Was Not My Superior In Some Particular.

The Rich Mind Lies In The Sun And Sleeps, And Is Nature.

All Are Needed By Each One; Nothing Is Fair Or Good Alone.

In Every Company, There Is Not Only The Active And Passive Sex, But, In Both Men And Women, A Deeper And More Important Sex Of Mind, Namely, The Inventive Or Creative Class Of Both Men And Women, And The Uninventive Or Accepting Class.

If You Maintain A Dead Church, Contribute To A Dead Bible-society, Vote With A Great Party Either For The Government Or Against It, Spread Your Table Like Base Housekeepers, - Under All These Screens I Have Diffuculty To Detect The Precise Man You Are: And Of Course So Much Force Is Withdrawn From Your Proper Life. But Do Your Work And I Shall Know You. Do Your Work, And You Shall Reinforce Yourself. A Man Must Consider What A Blind-man's Bluff Is This Game Of Conformity. If I Know Your Sect I Anticipate Your Argument.

The Good Lawyer Is Not The Man Who Has An Eye To Every Side And Angle Of Contingency, And Qualifies All His Qualifications, But Who Throws Himself On Your Part So Heartily, That He Can Get You Out Of A Scrape.

People Only See What They Are Prepared To See.

Never Utter The Truism But Live It Among Men.

No Man Can Have Society Upon His Own Terms.

There Are As Many Pillows Of Illusion As Flakes In A Snow-storm. We Wake From One Dream Into Another Dream.

The Method Of Nature: Who Could Ever Analyze It?

Give All To Love; Obey Thy Heart.

The World Makes Way For The Man Who Knows Where He Is Going

Accuracy Is Essential To Beauty.

It Is Always A Practical Difficulty With Clubs To Regulate The Laws Of Election So As To Exclude Peremptorily Every Social Nuisance. Nobody Wishes Bad Manners. We Must Have Loyalty And Character.

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

Every Actual State Is Corrupt. Good Men Must Not Obey The Laws Too Well. What Satire On Government Can Equal The Severity Of Censure Conveyed In The Word Politics ....?

Nature Magically Suits A Man To His Fortunes, By Making Them The Fruit Of His Character.

Poetry Being ... When We Look From The Center Outward.

Miracle Comes To The Miraculous, Not To The Arithmetician.

A Man Cannot Speak But He Judges Himself

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

Each Age, It Is Found, Must Write Its Own Books; Or Rather, Each Generation For The Next Succeeding.

The Farmer After Sacrificing Pleasure, Taste, Freedom, Thought, Love, To His Work, Turns Out Often A Bankrupt, Like The Merchant.this Result Might Well Seem Astounding. All This Drudgery, From Cockcrowing To Starlight, For All These Years, To End In Mortgages And The Auctioneer's Flag, And Removing From Bad To Worse. It Is Time To Have The Thing Looked Into, And With A Sifting Criticism Ascertained Who Is The Fool.

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

A Man Is A Method, A Progressive Arrangement; A Selecting Principle, Gathering His Like To Him; Wherever He Goes.

To Aim To Convert A Man By Miracles Is A Profanation Of The Soul. A True Conversion, A True Christ, Is Now, As Always, To Be Madeby The Reception Of Beautiful Sentiments.

When Believers And Unbelievers Live In The Same Manner - I Distrust The Religion.

The Preamble Of Thought, The Transition Through Which It Passes From The Unconscious To The Conscious, Is Action. Only So Much Do I Know, As I Have Lived. Instantly We Know Whose Words Are Loaded With Life, And Whose Not.

Cut These Words And They Would Bleed; They Are Vascular And Alive.

All Things Are Moral. That Soul, Which Within Us Is A Sentiment, Outside Of Us Is A Law. We Feel Its Inspiration; Out There In History We Can See Its Fatal Strength.

I Fear The Popular Notion Of Success Stands In Direct Opposition In All Points To The Real And Wholesome Success. One Adores Public Opinion, The Other, Private Opinion; One, Fame, The Other, Desert; One, Feats, The Other, Humility; One, Lucre, The Other, Love; One, Monopoly, And The Other, Hospitality Of Mind.

There Is An Optical Illusion About Every Person We Meet.

Optical Illusions

Transcendentalism

Few And Mean As My Gifts May Be, I Actually Am, And Do Not Need For My Own Assurance Or The Assurance Of My Fellows Any Secondary Testimony.

Herein Is The Explanation Of The Analogies, Which Exist In All The Arts. They Are The Re-appearance Of One Mind, Working In Many Materials To Many Temporary Ends. Raphael Paints Wisdom, Handel Sings It, Phidias Carves It, Shakspeare Writes It, Wren Builds It, Columbus Sails It, Luther Preaches It, Washington Arms It, Watt Mechanizes It. Painting Was Called "silent Poetry," And Poetry "speaking Painting." The Laws Of Each Art Are Convertible Into The Laws Of Every Other.

Vigor Is Contagious, And Whatever Makes Us Either Think Or Feel Strongly Adds To Our Power And Enlarges Our Field Of Action.

It Is Not Length Of Life, But Depth Of Life.

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

Some People Are Born Very Far From Home.

The Only Sin That We Never Forgive In Each Other Is A Difference In Opinion.

If You Tax Too High, The Revenue Will Yield Nothing.

Every Man Passes His Life In The Search After Friendship.

Line In Nature Is Not Found; Unit And Universe Are Round.

Men Have Looked Away From Themselves And At Things So Long That They Have Come To Esteem The Religious, Learned And Civil Institutions As Guards Of Property, And They Deprecate Assaults On These, Because They Feel Them To Be Assaults On Property. They Measure Their Esteem Of Each Other By What Each Has, And Not By What Each Is.

Our Best History Is Still Poetry.

Life Is A Search After Power.

There Is A Class Of Persons To Whom By All Spiritual Affinity I Am Bought And Sold; For Them I Will Go To Prison, If Need Be; But Your Miscellaneous Popular Charities; The Education At College Of Fools; The Building Of Meeting-houses To The Vain End To Which Many Now Stand; Alms To Sots; And The Thousandfold Relief Societies; - Though I Confess With Shame I Sometimes Succumb And Give The Dollar, It Is A Wicked Dollar Which By And By I Shall Have The Manhood To Withhold.

A Man In The View Of Absolute Goodness, Adores, With Total Humility. Every Step Downward, Is A Step Upward. The Man Who Renounceshimself, Comes To Himself.

Every Man Believes That He Has Greater Possibilities.

We Fetch Fire And Water, Run About All Day Among The Shops And Markets, And Get Our Clothes And Shoes Made And Mended, And Are Thevictims Of These Details, And Once In A Fortnight We Arrive Perhaps At A Rational Moment.

Truth Is Handsomer Than The Affectation Of Love. Your Goodness Must Have Some Edge To It, Else It Is None.

If We Encounter A Man Of Rare Intellect, We Should Ask Him What Books He Reads.

Not In His Goals But In His Transitions, Man Is Great.

We Lie In The Lap Of Immense Intelligence.

One Can Never Truly Savor Success Until First Tasting Adversity.

A Man Should Give Us A Sense Of Mass.

'tis A Good Rule In Every Journey To Provide Some Piece Of Liberal Study To Rescue The Hours Which Bad Weather, Bad Company, And Taverns Steal From The Best Economist.

And Truly It Demands Something God Like In Him Who Has Cast Off The Common Motives Of Humanity, And Has Ventured To Trust Himself For A Taskmaster. High Be His Heart, Faithful His Will, Clear His Sight, That He May In Good Earnest Be Doctrine, Society, Law, To Himself, That A Simple Purpose May Be To Him As Strong As Iron Necessity Is To Others!

We Legislate Against Forestalling And Monopoly; We Would Have A Common Granary For The Poor; But The Selfishness Which Hoards Thecorn For High Prices, Is The Preventative Of Famine; And The Law Of Self-preservation Is Surer Policy Than Any Legislation Can Be.

The God Or Hero Of The Sculptor Is Always Represented In A Transition From That Which Is Representable To The Senses, To That Which Is Not.

The Genius Of The Platonists, Is Intoxicating To The Student, Yet How Few Particulars Of It Can I Detach From All Their Books.

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