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I Am Not Engaged To Christianity By Decent Forms, Or Saving Ordinances; It Is Not Usage, It Is Not What I Do Not Understand, That Binds Me To It -- Let These Be The Sandy Foundations Of Falsehoods. What I Revere And Obey In It Is Its Reality, Its Boundless Charity, Its Deep Interior Life, The Rest It Gives To My Mind, The Echo It Returns To My Thoughts, The Perfect Accord It Makes With My Reason Through All Its Representation Of God And His Providence; And The Persuasion And Courage That Come Out Thence To Lead Me Upward And Onward.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Am Not Engaged

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Am Not Engaged To Christianity By Decent Forms, Or Saving Ordinances; It Is Not Usage, It Is Not What I Do Not Understand, That Binds Me To It -- Let These Be The Sandy Foundations Of Falsehoods. What I Revere And Obey In It Is Its Reality, Its Boundless Charity, Its Deep Interior Life, The Rest It Gives To My Mind, The Echo It Returns To My Thoughts, The Perfect Accord It Makes With My Reason Through All Its Representation Of God And His Providence; And The Persuasion And Courage That Come Out Thence To Lead Me Upward And Onward.

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Sugar Is Not So Sweet To The Palate As Sound To The Healthy Ear.

The Profoundest Thought Or Passion Sleeps As In A Mine, Until An Equal Mind And Heart Finds And Publishes It.

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.

Do You Want To Be A Power In The World? Then Be Yourself. Be True To The Highest Within Your Soul And Then Allow Yourself To Be Governed By No Customs Or Conventionaliti Es Or Arbitrary Man-made Rules That Are Not Founded On Principle.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It. Many Will Read The Book Before One Thinks Of Quoting A Passage. As Soon As He Has Done This, That Line Will Be Quoted East And West.

Commit A Crime, And The Earth Is Made Of Glass.

The Disease With Which The Human Mind Now Labors Is Want Of Faith

Knowledge Exists To Be Imparted.

The Modernness Of All Good Books Seems To Give Men An Existence As Wide As Man.

The Best Bribe Which London Offers To-day To The Imagination, Is, That, In Such A Vast Variety Of People And Conditions, One Can Believe There Is Room For Persons Of Romantic Character To Exist, And That The Poet, The Mystic, And The Hero May Hope To Confront Their Counterparts.

Who Makes And Keeps The Jew Or The Negro Base, Who But You, Who Exclude Them From The Rights Which Others Enjoy?

Man Is A Piece Of The Universe Made Alive

History - A Biography Of A Few Stout And Earnest Persons

Under The Dominion Of An Idea, Which Possesses The Minds Of Multitudes, As Civil Freedom, Or The Religious Sentiment, The Power Ofpersons Are No Longer Subjects Of Calculation. A Nation Of Men Unanimously Bent On Freedom, Or Conquest, Can Easily Confound The Arithmetic Of Statists, And Achieve Extravagant Actions, Out Of All Proportion To Their Means; As, The Greeks, The Saracens, The Swiss, The Americans, And The French Have Done.

No Man Thoroughly Understands A Truth Until He Has Contended Against It.

Nature Is Thoroughly Mediate. It Is Made To Serve. It Receives The Dominion Of Man As Meekly As The Ass On Which The Saviour Rode.it Offers All Its Kingdoms To Man As The Raw Material Which He May Mould Into What Is Useful. Man Is Never Weary Of Working It Up.

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

God Will Not Have His Work Made Manifest By Cowards. Always, Always, Always, Always, Always Do What You Are Afraid To Do. Do The Thing You Fear And The Death Of Fear Is Certain.

I Have Heard That Stiff People Lose Something Of Their Awkwardness Under High Ceilings, And In Spacious Halls. I Think, Sculptureand Painting Have An Effect To Teach Us Manners, And Abolish Hurry.

Every Man Beholds His Human Condition With A Degree Of Melancholy. As A Ship Aground Is Battered By The Waves, So Man, Imprisonedin Mortal Life, Lies Open To The Mercy Of Coming Events.

The Blazing Evidence Of Immortality Is Our Dissatisfaction With Any Other Solution.

Don't Be Pushed By Your Problems. Be Led By Your Dreams.

It Is Only As A Man Puts Off From Himself All External Support, And Stands Alone, That I See Him To Be Strong And To Prevail.

In Like Manner The Effect Of Every Action Is Measured By The Depth Of The Sentiment From Which It Proceeds. The Great Man Knew Not That He Was Great. It Took A Century Or Two For That Fact To Appear. What He Did, He Did, He Did Because He Must; It Was The Most Natural Thing In The World, And Grew Out Of The Circumstances Of The Moment.

We Live In A Very Low State Of The World, And Pay Unwilling Tribute To Government Founded On Force. There Is Not, Among The Most Religious And Instructed Men Of The Most Religious And Civil Nations, A Reliance On The Moral Sentiment, And A Sufficient Belief In The Unity Of Things To Persuade Them That Society Can Be Maintained Without Artificial Restraints, As Well As The Solar System; Or That The Private Citizen Might Be Reasonable, And A Good Neighbor, Without The Hint Of A Jail Or A Confiscation.

Only That Is Poetry Which Cleanses And Mans Me.

Every Reform Was Once A Private Opinion.

I Appeal Now To The Convictions Of The Communicants, And Ask Such Persons Whether They Have Not Been Occasionally Conscious Of A Painful Confusion Of Thought Between The Worship Due To God And The Commemoration Due To Christ.

In The Actual World--the Painful Kingdom Of Time And Place--dwell Care, And Canker, And Fear. With Thought, With The Ideal, Is Immortal Hilarity, The Rose Of Joy.

In The Vaunted Works Of Art, The Master-stroke Is Nature's Part.

In Certain Men Digestion And Sex Absorb The Vital Force, And The Stronger These Are, The Individual Is So Much Weaker. The More Ofthese Drones Perish, The Better For The Hive.

Many A Profound Genius, I Suppose, Who Fills The World With Fame Of His Exploding Renowned Errors, Is Yet Everyday Posed And Baffled By Trivial Questions At His Own Supper Table.

Men Of Character Are The Conscience Of The Society To Which They Belong.

Every Man Takes Care That His Neighbor Shall Not Cheat Him. But A Day Comes When He Begins To Care That He Does Not Cheat His Neighbor. Then All Goes Well. He Has Changed His Market Cart Into A Chariot Of The Sun.

Philanthropies And Charities Have A Certain Air Of Quackery.

What A New Face Courage Puts On Everything!

An English Family Consists Of A Few Persons, Who, From Youth To Age, Are Found Revolving Within A Few Feet Of Each Other, As If Tied By Some Invisible Ligature, Tense As That Cartilage Which We Have Seen Attaching The Two Siamese.

I Would Study, I Would Know, I Would Admire Forever.

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

Natural Science Sharpens The Discrimination. There Is No False Logic In Nature. All Its Properties Are Permanent: The Acids And Metals Never Lie; Their Yea Is Yea, Their Nay, Nay. They Are Newly Discovered But Not New.

A Scholar Is A Man With His Inconvenience, That, When You Ask Him His Opinion Of Any Matter, He Must Go Home And Look Up His Manuscripts To Know.

Five Great Enemies Of Peace Inhabit Us: Avarice, Ambition, Envy, Anger And Pride.

The Whole Constitution Of Property On Its Present Tenures, Is Injurious, And Its Influence On Persons Deteriorating And Degrading.

The Greatest Discoveries Are Those That Shed Light Unto Ourselves.

Every Book Is A Quotation; And Every House Is A Quotation Out Of All Forests, And Mines, And Stone Quarries; And Every Man Is A Quotation From All His Ancestors.

To Different Minds, The Same World Is A Hell, And A Heaven.

Is All Literature Eavesdropping, And All Art Chinese Imitation? Our Life A Custom, And Our Body Borrowed, Like A Beggar’s Dinner, From A Hundred Charities?

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

We Stand Against Fate, As Children Stand Up Against The Wall In Their Father's House, And Notch Their Height From Year To Year. But When The Boy Grows To A Man, And Is Master Of The House, He Pulls Down That Wall And Builds It New And Bigger.

The Condition Which High Friendship Demands Is Ability To Do Without It.

The World Is The Ring Of His Spells, And The Play Of His Miracles.

Without A Rich Heart, Wealth Is An Ugly Beggar.

All Successful Men Have Agreed In One Thing -- They Were Causationists. They Believed That Things Went Not By Luck, But By Law; That There Was Not A Weak Or A Cracked Link In The Chain That Joins The First And Last Of Things.

We Flee Away From Cities, But We Bring The Best Of Cities, These Learned Classifiers, Men Knowing What They Seek, Armed Eyes Of Experts.

Want Is A Growing Giant Whom The Coat Of Have Was Never Large Enough To Cover.

Nothing Is Great But The Inexhaustible Wealth Of Nature.

In Every Man There Is Something Wherein I May Learn Of Him, And In That I Am His Pupil.

Every Revolution Was First A Thought In One Man's Mind.

An Actually Existing Fly Is More Important Than A Possibly Existing Angel.

The Lover Of Letters Loves Power Too.

But The Mark Of American Merit In Painting, In Sculpture, In Poetry, In Fiction, In Eloquence, Seems To Be A Certain Grace Withoutgrandeur, And Itself Not New But Derivative; A Vase Of Fair Outline, But Empty,--which Whoso Sees, May Fill With What Wit And Character Is In Him, But Which Does Not, Like The Charged Cloud, Overflow With Terrible Beauty, And Emit Lightnings On All Beholders.

Heroism Works In Contradiction To The Voice Of Mankind And In Contradiction, For A Time, To The Voice Of The Great And Good. Heroism Is An Obedience To A Secret Impulse Of An Individual

A Painter Told Me That Nobody Could Draw A Tree Without In Some Sort Becoming A Tree.

Bare Lists Of Words Are Found Suggestive To An Imaginative And Excited Mind.

The Poet A Moody Child And Wildly Wise Pursued The Game With Joyful Eyes, Which Chose, Like Meteors, Their Way, And Rived The Dark With Private Ray: They Overleapt The Horizon's Edge, Searched With Apollo's Privilege; Through Man, And Woman, And Sea, And Star, Saw The Dance Of Nature Forward Far; Through Worlds, And Races, And Terms, And Times, Saw Musical Order, And Pairing Rhymes. Olympian Bards Who Sung Divine Ideas Below, Which Always Find Us Young, And Always Keep Us So.

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

We Are Not Very Much To Blame For Our Bad Marriages. We Live Amid Hallucinations, And Especial Trap Is Laid To Trip Up Our Feet With, And All Are Tripped Up First Or Last. But The Mighty Mother, Who Had Been So Sly With Us, As If She Felt She Owed Us Some Indemnity, Insinuates Into The Pandora Box Of Marriage Some Deep And Serious Benefits, And Some Great Joys.

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.

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.

Cities Force Growth And Make People Talkative And Entertaining, But They Also Make Them Artificial.

Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands.

The Life Of Man Is A Self-evolving Circle.

For What Avail The Plough Or Sail, Or Land Or Life, If Freedom Fail?

Character Teaches Above Our Wills.

God Hides Things By Putting Them Near Us.

Nature Encourages No Looseness; Pardons No Errors.

Every Spirit Builds Itself A House; And Beyond Its House, A World; And Beyond Its World A Heaven. Know Then, That The World Exists For You: Build, Therefore, Your Own World.

We Are Too Civil To Books. For A Few Golden Sentences We Will Turn Over And Actually Read A Volume Of Four Or Five Hundred Pages.

Though Your Views Are In Straight Antagonism To Theirs, Assume An Identity Of Sentiment, Assume That You Are Saying Precisely Thatwhich All Think, And In The Flow Of Wit And Love Roll Out Your Paradoxes In Solid Column, With Not The Infirmity Of A Doubt.

These Times Of Ours Are Series And Full Of Calamity, But All Times Are Essentially Alike. As Soon As There Is Life There Is Danger.

Cultivate The Habit Of Being Grateful... And ...give Thanks Continuously.

Wherever We Go, Whatever We Do, Self Is The Sole Subject We Study And Learn.

Faith And Love Are Apt To Be Spasmodic In The Best Minds: Men Live On The Brink Of Mysteries And Harmonies Into Which Yet They Never Enter, And With Their Hand On The Doorlatch They Die Outside.

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

Labor Is God's Education.

Let Us Answer A Book Of Ink With A Book Of Flesh And Blood.

Those Who Cannot Tell What They Desire Or Expect, Still Sigh And Struggle With Indefinite Thoughts And Vast Wishes.

Happy Is The House That Shelters A Friend.

What Art Can Paint Or Gild Any Object In After Life With The Glow Which Nature Gives To The First Baubles Of Childhood? St. Peter's Cannot Have The Magical Power Over Us That The Red And Gold Covers Of Our First Picture-book Possessed.

All Sensible People Are Selfish, And Nature Is Tugging At Every Contract To Make The Terms Of It Fair.

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

'tis A Superstition To Insist On A Special Diet. All Is Made At Last Of The Same Chemical Atoms.

Love Should Make Joy; But Our Benevolence Is Unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, And Churches, And Pauper-societies Are Yokes To The Neck. We Pain Ourselves To Please Nobody.

A Sturdy Lad From New Hampshire Or Vermont Who In Turn Tries All The Professions, Who Teams It, Farms It, Peddles, Keeps A School,preaches, Edits A Newspaper, Goes To Congress, Buys A Township, And So Forth, In Successive Years, And Always Like A Cat Falls On His Feet, Is Worth A Hundred Of These City Dolls. 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.

The Right Eloquence Needs No Bell To Call The People Together, And No Constable To Keep Them.

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.

A Great Man Is Always Willing To Be Little.

A Man Is Known By The Books He Reads.

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.

Goodness That Preaches Undoes Itself.

We Call The Beautiful The Highest, Because It Appears To Us The Golden Mean, Escaping The Dowdiness Of The Good And The Heartlessness Of The True.

Indeed The River Is A Perpetual Gala, And Boasts Each Month A New Ornament.

Immitation Is Suicide.

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

Every Mind Must Know The Whole Lesson For Itself,-must Go Over The Whole Ground. What It Does Not See, What It Does Not Live, It Will Not Know.

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

The Delicate Muses Lose Their Head If Their Attention Is Once Diverted. Perhaps If You Were Successful Abroad In Talking And Dealing With Men, You Would Not Come Back To Your Bookshelf And Your Task. When The Spirit Chooses You For Its Scribe To Publish Some Commandment, It Makes You Odious To Men And Men Odious To You, And You Shall Accept That Loathsomeness With Joy. The Moth Must Fly To The Lamp, And You Must Solve Those Questions Though You Die.

Society Does Not Love Its Unmaskers.

I Find Nothing In Fables More Astonishing Than My Experience In Every Hour. One Moment Of A Man's Life Is A Fact So Stupendous As To Take The Luster Out Of Fiction.

We Are Impressed And Even Daunted By The Immense Universe To Be Explored. "what We Know Is A Point To What We Do Not Know."

With Each Divine Impulse The Mind Rends The Thin Rinds Of The Visible And Finite, And Comes Out Into Eternity, And Inspires And Expires Its Air. It Converses With Truths That Have Always Been Spoken In The World, And Becomes Conscious Of A Closer Sympathy With Zeno And Arrian, Than With Persons In The House.

The Compensations Of Calamity Are Made Apparent To The Understanding Also, After Long Intervals Of Time. A Fever, A Mutilation, A Cruel Disappointment, A Loss Of Wealth, A Loss Of Friends, Seems At The Moment Unpaid Loss, And Unpayable. But The Sure Years Reveal The Deep Remedial Force That Underlies All Facts.

A Good Intention But Fixed And Resolute - Bent On High And Holy Ends, We Shall Find Means To Them On Every Side And At Every Moment; And Even Obstacles And Opposition Will But Make Us "like The Fabled Specter-ships," Which Sail The Fastest In The Very Teeth Of The Wind.

It Is One Soul Which Animates All Men.

We Walk Alone In The World.

Heaven Walks Among Us Ordinarily Muffled In Such Triple Or Tenfold Disguises That The Wisest Are Deceived And No One Suspects The Days To Be Gods.

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

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

The Wings Of Time Are Black And White, Pied With Morning And With Night.

Black And White

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

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.

The Wave Of Evil Washes All Our Institutions Alike.

Improve Your Spare Moments And They Will Become The Brightest Gems In Your Life.

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

All Men Plume Themselves On The Improvement Of Society, And No Man Improves.

Only Be Admonished By What You Already See, Not To Strike Leagues Of Friendship With Cheap Persons, Where No Friendship Can Be. Our Impatience Betrays Us Into Rash And Foolish Alliances Which No God Attends.

Wealth Brings With It Its Own Checks And Balances. The Basis Of Political Economy Is Noninterference. The Only Safe Rule Is Found In The Self-adjusting Meter Of Demand And Supply. Open The Doors Of Opportunity To Talent And Virtue And They Will Do Themselves Justice, And Property Will Not Be In Bad Hands. In A Free And Just Commonwealth, Property Rushes From The Idle And Imbecile To The Industrious, Brave And Persevering.

No Man Has A Right Perception Of Any Truth, Who Has Not Been Reacted On By It, So As To Be Ready To Be Its Martyr.

The Efforts Which We Make To Escape From Our Destiny Only Serve To Lead Us Into It.

The Book, The College, The School Of Art, The Institution Of Any Kind, Stop With Some Past Utterance Of Genius. . . . They Look Backward And Not Forward. But Genius Looks Forward: The Eyes Of Man Are Set In His Forehead, Not In His Hindhead: Man Hopes: Genius Creates. Whatever Talents May Be, If The Man Create Not, The Pure Efflux Of The Deity Is Not His; - Cinders And Smoke There May Be, But Not Yet Flame.

When A Happy Person Comes Into The Room, It Is As If Another Candle Has Been Lit.

He Who Would Be A Man Must Therefore Be A Non-conformist.

The World Is Nothing, The Man Is All; In Yourself Is The Law Of All Nature, And You Know Not Yet How A Globule Of Sap Ascends; In Yourself Slumbers The Whole Of Reason; It Is For You To Know All, It Is For You To Dare All.

In The Highest Civilization, The Book Is Still The Highest Delight. He Who Has Once Known Its Satisfactions Is Provided With A Resource Against Calamity.

A Feeble Man Can See The Farms That Are Fenced And Tilled, The Houses That Are Built. The Strong Man Sees The Possible Houses And Farms. His Eye Makes Estates As Fast As The Sun Breeds Clouds.

A Frenchman May Possibly Be Clean; An Englishman Is Conscientiously Clean.

Money Is The Representative Of A Certain Quantity Of Corn Or Other Commodity. It Is So Much Warmth, So Much Bread.

If You Act, You Show Character; If You Sit Still, You Show It; If You Sleep You Show It.

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

Genius Has No Taste For Weaving Sand.

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

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

Before We Acquire Great Power We Must Acquire Wisdom To Use It Well.

The Cheapness Of Man Is Every Day's Tragedy.

There Is An Optical Illusion About Every Person We Meet.

Optical Illusions

Transcendentalism

Numbers Serve To Discipline Rhetoric. Without Them It Is Too Easy To Follow Flights Of Fancy, To Ignore The World As It Is And To Remold It Nearer The Heart's Desire.

A Friend May Be Nature's Most Magnificent Creation.

New Arts Destroy The Old.

There Are Only Ten Minutes In The Life Of A Pear When It Is Perfect To Eat.

A True Man Belongs To No Other Time Or Place, But Is The Center Of Things.

The Reward Of A Thing Well Done, Is To Have Done It.

All Reform Aims, In Some One Particular, To Let The Soul Have Its Way Through Us; In Other Words, To Engage Us To Obey.

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

Give Me Truths For I Am Weary Of The Surfaces.

Nature Is A Mutable Cloud Which Is Always And Never The Same.

Within, I Do Not Find Wrinkles And Used Heart, But Unspent Youth.

A Strenuous Soul Hates Cheap Success. It Is The Ardor Of The Assailant That Makes The Vigor Of The Defendant.

Why Should The Way I Feel Depend On The Thoughts In Someone Else's Head?

We Must Learn The Language Of Facts. The Most Wonderful Inspirations Die With Their Subject, If He Has No Hand To Paint Them To The Senses.

...in The Wilderness, I Find Something More Dear And Connate Than In The Streets Or Villages...in The Woods We Return To Reason And Faith.

We Come To Our Own And Would Make Friends With Matter, Which The Ambitious Chatter Of The Schools Would Persuade Us To Despise. We Can Never Part With It; The Mind Loves Its Old Home: As Water To Our Thirst, So Is Rock, The Ground, To Our Eyes, And Hands, And Feet. It Is Firm Water: It Is Cold Flame: What Health, What Affinity!

Among Provocative, The Next Best Thing To Good Preaching Is Bad Preaching.

At The Gates Of The Forest, The Surprised Man Of The World Is Forced To Leave His City Estimates Of Great And Small, Wise And Foolish. The Knapsack Of Custom Falls Off His Back With The First Step He Makes Into These Precincts. Here Is Sanctity Which Shames Our Religions, And Reality Which Discredits Our Heroes. Here We Find Nature To Be The Circumstance Which Dwarfs Every Other Circumstance, And Judges Like A God All Men That Come To Her.

I Must Be Myself. I Cannot Break Myself Any Longer For You, Or You. If You Can Love Me For What I Am, We Shall Be The Happier. If You Cannot, I Will Still Seek To Seserve That You Should.

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 Rain Has Spoiled The Farmer's Day; Shall Sorrow Put My Books Away? Thereby Are Two Days Lost.

A Chief Event Of Life Is The Day In Which We Have Encountered A Mind That Startled Us.

The Machine Unmakes The Man. Now That The Machine Is So Perfect, The Engineer Is Nobody.

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

If The Black Man Is Feeble And Not Important To The Existing Races, Not On A Parity With The Best Race, The Black Man Must Serve,and Be Exterminated. But If The Black Man Carries In His Bosom An Indispensable Element Of A New And Coming Civilization; For The Sake Of That Element, No Wrong Nor Strength Nor Circumstance Can Hurt Him: He Will Survive And Play His Part. So Now, The Arrival In The World Of Such Men As Toussaint, And The Haytian Heroes, Or Of The Leaders Of Their Race In Barbadoes And Jamaica, Outweighs In Good Omen All The English And American Humanity.

For Beauty Is God's Handwriting...a Nd, Thank God For It As A Cup Of His Blessing.

Christian Inspirational

As Long As Any Man Exists, There Is Some Need Of Him.

Beauty Without Expression Is Boring.

The Highest Proof Of Civility Is That The Whole Public Action Of The State Is Directed On Securing The Greatest Good Of The Greatest Number.

Nature Arms Each Man With Some Faculty Which Enables Him To Do Easily Some Feat Impossible To Any Other.

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

Words You Speak

The Soul Comes From Without Into The Human Body, As Into A Temporary Abode, And It Goes Out Of It Anew It Passes Into Other Habitations, For The Soul Is Immortal.

A Friend Is A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere. Before Him I May Think Aloud. I Am Arrived At Last In The Presence Of A Man So Real And Equal, That I May Drop Even Those Undermost Garments Of Dissimulation, Courtesy, And Second Thought, Which Men Never Put Off, And May Deal With Him With The Simplicity And Wholeness With Which One Chemical Atom Meets Another.

Our Friendships Hurry To Short And Poor Conclusions, Because We Have Made Them A Texture Of Wine And Dreams, Instead Of The Toughfibre Of The Human Heart. The Laws Of Friendship Are Austere And Eternal, Of One Web With The Laws Of Nature And Of Morals.

Let The Words Be Gazetted And Ridiculous Henceforward.

Something Is Wanting To Science Until It Has Been Humanised.

Always Maintain Your Common Sense And Artful Skills, And Funnel It All Into Plain Enough Dealings.

Whoso Would Be A Man Must Be A Nonconformist.

Being Different

If You Put A Chain Around The Neck Of A Slave, The Other End Fastens Itself Around Your Own.

The Landscape Belongs To The Person Who Looks At It..." -ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We Dare Not Trust Our Wit For Making Our House Pleasant To Our Friend, So We Buy Ice Cream.

It Is The Duty Of Men To Judge Men Only By Their Actions. Our Faculties Furnish Us With No Means Of Arriving At The Motive, The Character, The Secret Self. We Call The Tree Good From Its Fruits, And The Man, From His Works.

Every Thing Admonishes Us How Needlessly Long Life Is.

Power Is What They Want, Not Candy-power To Execute Their Design, Power To Give Legs And Feet, Form And Actuality To Their Thought; Which, To A Clear-sighted Man, Appears The End For Which The Universe Exists, And All Its Resources Might Be Well Applied.

It Is Easy To Live For Others, Everybody Does. I Call On You To Live For Yourself.

Our Faith Comes In Moments . . . Yet There Is A Depth In Those Brief Moments Which Constrains Us To Ascribe More Reality To Them Than To All Other Experiences.

The Senses Collect The Surface Facts Of Matter... It Was Sensation; When Memory Came, It Was Experience; When Mind Acted, It Was Knowledge; When Mind Acted On It As Knowledge, It Was Thought.

The Intellectual Man Requires A Fine Bait; The Sots Are Easily Amused. But Everybody Is Drugged With His Own Frenzy, And The Pageant Marches At All Hours, With Music And Banner And Badge.

Conservatism Stands On Man's Confessed Limitations; Reform On His Indisputable Infinitude; Conservatism On Circumstance; Liberalism On Power; One Goes To Make An Adroit Member Of The Social Frame; The Other To Postpone All Things To The Man Himself.

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.

No Doubt, To A Man Of Sense, Travel Offers Advantages. As Many Languages As He Has, As Many Friends, As Many Arts And Trades, So Many Times Is He A Man. A Foreign Country Is A Point Of Comparison, Wherefrom To Judge His Own.

Good Breeding, A Union Of Kindness And Independence.

A Man Passes For That He Is Worth. What He Is Engraves Itself On His Face, On His Form, On His Fortunes, In Letters Of Light. Concealment Avails Him Nothing; Boasting Nothing. There Is Confession In The Glances Of Our Eyes; In Our Smiles; In Salutations; And The Grasp Of Hands.

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