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I Am Thankful For Small Mercies. I Compared Notes With One Of My Friends Who Expect Everything Of The Universe, And Is Disappointed When Anything Is Less Than The Best, And I Found That I Begin At The Other Extreme, Expecting Nothing, And Am Always Full Of Thanks For Moderate Good. . . . If We Will Take The Good We Find, . . . We Shall Have Heaping Measures. . . .

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Am Thankful For

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Am Thankful For Small Mercies. I Compared Notes With One Of My Friends Who Expect Everything Of The Universe, And Is Disappointed When Anything Is Less Than The Best, And I Found That I Begin At The Other Extreme, Expecting Nothing, And Am Always Full Of Thanks For Moderate Good. . . . If We Will Take The Good We Find, . . . We Shall Have Heaping Measures. . . .

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

The Best Nations Are Those Most Widely Related; And Navigation, As Effecting A World-wide Mixture, Is The Most Potent Advancer Ofnations.

A Man In Pursuit Of Greatness Feels No Little Wants.

Let The River Roll Which Way It Will, Cities Will Rise On Its Banks.

By His Machines Man Can Dive And Remain Under Water Like A Shark; Can Fly Like A Hawk In The Air; Can See Atoms Like A Gnat; Can See The System Of The Universe Of Uriel, The Angel Of The Sun; Can Carry Whatever Loads A Ton Of Coal Can Lift; Can Knock Down Cities With His Fist Of Gunpowder; Can Recover The History Of His Race By The Medals Which The Deluge, And Every Creature, Civil Or Savage Or Brute, Has Involuntarily Dropped Of Its Existence; And Divine The Future Possibility Of The Planet And Its Inhabitants By His Perception Of Laws Of Nature.

Language Is A City To The Building Of Which Every Human Being Brought A Stone.

Language And Power

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

When The Gods Come Among Men, They Are Not Known.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Suffer No Fiction To Exist For Us; To Realize All That We Know; In The High Refinement Of Modern Life,in Arts, In Sciences, In Books, In Men, To Exact Good Faith, Reality, And A Purpose; And First, Last, Midst, And Without End, To Honor Every Truth By Use.

The Passages Of Shakespeare That We Most Prize Were Never Quoted Until Within This Century.

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.

All Loss, All Pain, Is Particular; The Universe Remains To The Heart Unhurt.

When Life Has Been Well Spent, Age Is A Loss Of What It Can Well Spare,--muscular Strength, Organic Instincts, Gross Bulk, And Works That Belong To These. But The Central Wisdom, Which Was Old In Infancy, Is Young In Fourscore Years, And Dropping Off Obstructions, Leaves In Happy Subjects The Mind Purified And Wise.

Whoever Is Open, Loyal, True; Of Humane And Affable Demeanour; Honourable Himself, And In His Judgement Of Others; Faithful To His Word As To Law, And Faithful Alike To God And Man....such A Man Is A True Gentleman.

Remarkable Trait In The American Character Is The Union, Not Very Infrequent, Of Yankee Cleverness With Spiritualism.

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.

The Believing We Do Something When We Do Nothing Is The First Illusion Of Tobacco.

There Is Guidance For Each Of Us, And By Lowly Listening We Shall Hear The Right Word.

Draw, If Thou Canst, The Mystic Line, Severing Rightly His From Thine, Which Is Human, Which Divine.

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.

If You Have A Nation Of Men Who Have Risen To That Height Of Moral Cultivation That They Will Not Declare War Or Carry Arms, For They Have Not So Much Madness Left In Their Brains, You Have A Nation Of Lovers, Of Benefactors, Of True, Great, And Able Men.

The Compensations Of Calamity Are Made Apparent To The Understanding Also, After Long Intervals Of Time.

The Three Practical Rules, Then, Which I Have To Offer, Are, --/ Never Read A Book That Is Not A Year Old./ Never Read Any But The Famed Books./ Never Read Any But What You Like.

The Measure Of Mental Health Is The Disposition To Find Good Everywhere.

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

If I Have Lost Confidence In Myself, I Have The Universe Against Me.

With Consistency A Great Soul Has Simply Nothing To Do. He May As Well Concern Himself With His Shadow On The Wall.

Science Was False By Being Unpoetical. It Assumed To Explain A Reptile Or A Mollusk, And Isolated It-which Is Hunting For Life In Graveyards. Reptile Or Mollusk Or Man Or Angel Only Exists In System, In Relation.

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

Unhappily, No Man Exists Who Has Not In His Own Person Become, To Some Amount, A Stockholder In The Sin, And So Made Himself Liable To A Share In The Expiation.

The Music That Can Deepest Reach And Cure All Ill Is Cordial Speech.

Children Are All Foreigners.

Action Is The Process Whereby What Is Not Fully Formed Passes Into Expressive Consciousness.

A Man Cannot Speak But He Judges Himself. With His Will Or Against His Will He Draws His Portrait To The Eye Of His Companions By Every Word. Every Opinion Reacts On Him Who Utters It. It Is A Threadball Thrown At A Mark, But The Other End Remains On The Thrower

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

To Get Up Each Morning With The Resolve To Be Happy Is To Set Your Own Conditions To The Events Of Each Day. To Do This Is To Condition Circumstances Instead Of Being Conditioned By Them.

Nature Never Wears A Mean Appearance. Neither Does The Wisest Man Extort Her Secret, And Lose His Curiosity By Finding Out All Her Perfection.

We Lie In The Lap Of Immense Intelligence.

We Do Not Quite Forgive A Giver. The Hand That Feeds Us Is In Some Danger Of Being Bitten.

In England Every Man You Meet Is Some Man's Son; In America, He May Be Some Man's Father.

Power Obeys Reality, And Not Appearances; Power Is According To Quality, And Not Quantity.

The Beautiful Is Never Plentiful.

Insist On Yourself; Never Imitate. Your Own Gift You Can Offer With The Cumulative Force Of A Whole Life's Cultivation, But Of The Adopted Talent Of Another, You Have Only An Extemporaneous, Half Possession.

Great Conversation ... Requires An Absolute Running Of Two Souls Into One.

A Few Strong Instincts And A Few Plain Rules Suffice Us

Character Repudiates Intellect, Yet Excites It; And Character Passes Into Thought, Is Published So, And Then Is Ashamed Before Newflashes Of Moral Worth.

A Man Should Not Go Where He Cannot Carry His Whole Sphere Or Society With Him,mnot Bodily, The Whole Circle Of His Friends, But Atmospherically. He Should Preserve In A New Company The Same Attitude Of Mind And Reality Of Relation, Which His Daily Associates Draw Him To, Else He Is Shorn Of His Best Beams, And Will Be An Orphan In The Merriest Club.

Do Your Thing, And I Shall Know You.

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

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

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

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.

As To Methods, There May Be A Million And Then Some, But Principles Are Few. The Man Who Grasps Principles Can Successfully Select His Own Methods.

No Law Can Be Sacred To Me But That Of My Nature. Good And Bad Are But Names Very Readily Transferable To That Or This; The Only Right Is What Is After My Constitution; The Only Wrong Is What Is Against It.

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.

Language Is The Archives Of History.

The Other Terror That Scares Us From Self-trust Is Our Consistency; A Reverence For Our Past Act Or Word, Because The Eyes Of Others Have No Other Data For Computing Our Orbit Than Our Past Acts, And We Are Loath To Disappoint Them.

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

There Is The Illusion Of Time, Which Is Very Deep; Who Has Disposed Of It? Mor Come To The Conviction That What Seems The Succession Of Thought Is Only The Distribution Of Wholes Into Causal Series.

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

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.

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.

People Forget That It Is The Eye Which Makes The Horizon, And The Rounding Mind's Eye Which Makes This Or That Man A Type Or Representative Of Humanity With The Name Of Hero Or Saint.

Without Looking, Then, To Those Extraordinary Social Influences Which Are Now Acting In Precisely This Direction, But Only At Whatis Inevitably Doing Around Us, I Think We Must Regard The Land As A Commanding And Increasing Power On The Citizen, The Sanative And Americanizing Influence, Which Promises To Disclose New Virtues For Ages To Come.

I Believe That Our Own Experience Instructs Us That The Secret Of Education Lies In Respecting The Pupil.

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.

Be An Opener Of Doors

If A Man Will Kick A Fact Out Of The Window, When He Comes Back He Finds It Again In The Chimney Corner.

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

Without A Rich Heart, Wealth Is An Ugly Beggar.

Wisdom Has Its Root In Goodness, Not Goodness Its Root In Wisdom.

Presently We Pass To Some Other Object Which Rounds Itself Into A Whole As Did The First; For Example, A Well-laid Garden; And Nothing Seems Worth Doing But The Laying~out Of Gardens.

Science, Nature,-o, I've Yearned To Open Some Page.

The Artists Must Be Sacrificed To Their Art. Like The Bees, They Must Put Their Lives Into The Sting They Give.

When I Walk Up The Piazza Of Santa Croce I Feel As If It Were Not A Florentine Nor An European Church But A Church Built By And For The Human Race.

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

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.

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

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

The Permanence Of All Books Is Fixed By No Effort Friendly Or Hostile, But By Their Own Specific Gravity, Or The Intrinsic Importance Of Their Contents To The Constant Mind Of Man.

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.

Science Corrects The Old Creeds, Sweeps Away, With Every New Perception, Our Infantile Catechisms, And Necessitates A Faith Commensurate With The Grander Orbits And Universal Laws Which It Discloses Yet It Does Not Surprise The Moral Sentiment That Was Older And Awaited Expectant These Larger Insights.

It Is Hard To Go Beyond Your Public. If They Are Satisfied With Cheap Performance, You Will Not Easily Arrive At Better. If They Know What Is Good, And Require It. You Will Aspire And Burn Until You Achieve It. But From Time To Time, In History, Men Are Born A Whole Age Too Soon.

The Selfish Man Suffers More From His Selfishness Than He From Whom That Selfishness Withholds Some Important Benefit.

Necessity Does Everything Well.

Every Wall Is A Door.

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.

All My Hurts My Garden Spade Can Heal.

The Only Compensation Which War Offers For Its Manifold Mischiefs, Is In The Great Personal Qualities To Which It Gives Scope And Occasion.

Personal Qualities

A Garden Has This Advantage, That It Makes It Indifferent Where You Live. A Well-laid Garden Makes The Face Of The Country Of No Account; Let That Be Low Or High, Grand Or Mean, You Have Made A Beautiful Abode Worthy Of Man.

Belief Consists In Accepting The Affirmations Of The Soul; Unbelief In Denying Them.

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.

A Strong Person Makes The Law And Custom Null Before His Own Will.

Goodness That Preaches Undoes Itself.

Observe How Every Truth And Every Error, Each A Thought Of Someone's Mind, Clothes Itself With Societies, Houses, Cities, Language, Ceremonies, Newspapers

The Boxer's Ring Is The Enjoyment Of The Part Of Society Whose Animal Nature Alone Has Been Developed.

Let Us Be Silent — So We May Hear The Whisper Of The Gods.

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

Quotation Confesses Inferiority.

Intemperance Is The Only Vulgarity.

Colleges, In Like Manner, Have Their Indispensable Office,--to Teach Elements. But They Can Only Highly Serve Us, When They Aim Not To Drill, But To Create; When They Gather From Far Every Ray Of Various Genius To Their Hospitable Halls, And, By The Concentrated Fires, Set The Hearts Of Their Youth On Flame.

Society Is A Masked Ball, Where Every One Hides His Real Character, And Reveals It By Hiding.

Society Is Infested By Persons Who, Seeing That The Sentiments Please, Counterfeit The Expression Of Them. These We Call Sentimentalists - Talkers Who Mistake The Description For The Thing, Saying For Having.

If I Know Your Sect, I Anticipate Your Argument

We Cannot Forgive Another For Not Being Ourselves.

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

I Find Nothing Healthful Or Exalting In The Smooth Conventions Of Society. I Do Not Like The Close Air Of Saloons. I Begin To Suspect Myself To Be A Prisoner, Though Treated With All This Courtesy And Luxury. I Pay A Destructive Tax In My Conformity.

In Spite Of Virtue And The Muse, Nemesis Will Have Her Dues, And All Our Struggles And Our Toils Tighter Wind The Giant Coils.

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

For, Whom The Muses Smile Upon, And Touch With Soft Persuasion, His Words Like A Storm-wind Can Bring Terror And Beauty On Their Wing; In His Every Syllable Lurketh Nature Veritable.

The Flowering Of Civilization Is The Finished Man, The Man Of Sense, Of Grace, Of Accomplishment, Of Social Power--the Gentleman.

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

We Love It Because It Is Self Dependent, Self Derived, And Therefore Of An Old Immaculate Pedigree, Even If Shown In A Young Person.

The The Illuminated Mind The Whole World Sparkles With Light.

Hume's Doctrine Was That The Circumstances Vary, The Amount Of Happiness Does Not; That The Beggar Cracking Fleas In The Sunshine Under A Hedge, And The Duke Rolling By In His Chariot, The Girl Equipped For Her First Ball, And The Orator Returning Triumphant From The Debate, Had Different Means, But The Same Quantity Of Pleasant Excitement.

The Poorest Experience Is Rich Enough For All The Purposes Of Expressing Thought

To Be Rich Is To Have A Ticket Of Admission To The Masterworks And Chief Men Of Each Race. It Is To Have The Sea, By Voyaging; To Visit The Mountains, Niagara, The Nile, The Desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople: To See Galleries, Libraries, Arsenals, Manufactories.

Test Of The Poet Is Knowledge Of Love, For Eros Is Older Than Saturn Or Jove; Never Was Poet, Of Late Or Of Yore, Who Was Not Tremulous With Love-lore.

Alas For The Unhappy Man That Is Called To Stand In The Pulpit, And Not Give The Bread Of Life.

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

The Men Who Carry Their Points Do Not Need To Inquire Of Their Constituents What They Should Say, But Are Themselves The Country Which They Represent: Nowhere Are Its Emotions Or Opinions So Instant And So True As In Them; Nowhere So Pure From A Selfish Infusion.

The Only Method To Possess A Buddy Is Always To Be One.

Mankind Divides Itself Into Two Classes,--benefactors And Malefactors. The Second Class Is Vast; The First A Handful.

The Desire Of Gold Is Not For Gold. It Is Not The Love Of Much Wheat, And Wool And Household Stuff. It Is The Means Of Freedom And Benefit.

Prayer That Craves A Particular Commodity, Anything Less Than All Good, Is Vicious.

My Life Is For Itself And Not For A Spectacle.

No Matter How You Seem To Fatten On A Crime, There Can Never Be Good For The Bee Which Is Bad For The Hive.

If You Meet A Sectary, Or A Hostile Partisan, Never Recognize The Dividing Lines; But Meet On What Common Ground Remains,--if Onlythat The Sun Shines, And The Rain Rains For Both; The Area Will Widen Very Fast, And Ere You Know It The Boundary Mountains, On Which The Eye Had Fastened, Have Melted Into Air.

There Is Something Servile In The Habit Of Seeking After A Law Which We Must Obey.

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

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.

Sleep Takes Off The Costume Of Circumstance, Arms Us With Terrible Freedom, So That Every Will Rushes To Deed. A Skillful Man Reads His Dreams For His Self-knowledge; Yet Not The Details, But The Quality. What Part Does He Play In Them - A Cheerful, Manly Part, Or A Poor, Drivelling Part? However Monstrous And Grotesque Their Apparitions, They Have A Substantial Truth.

Cause And Effect Are Two Sides Of One Fact.

Who Gave Thee, O Beauty, The Keys Of This Breast,-- Too Credulous Lover Of Blest And Unblest? Say, When In Lapsed Ages Thee Knew I Of Old? Or What Was The Service For Which I Was Sold?

The Affirmative Class Monopolize The Homage Of Mankind. They Originate And Execute All The Great Feats. What A Force Was Coiled Upin The Skull Of Napoleon!

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

Of Nature Itself Upon The Soul; The Sunrise, The Haze Of Autumn, The Winter Starlight Seem Interlocutors; The Prevailing Sense Is That Of An Exposition In Poetry; A High Discourse, The Voice Of The Speaker Seems To Breathe As Much From The Landscape As From His Own Breast; It Is Nature Communing With The Seer.

It Is In Rugged Crises, In Unbearable Endurance, And In Aims Which Put Sympathy Out Of The Question, That The Angel Is Shown.

If We Live Truly, We Shall See Truly.

I Am Thankful For Small Mercies. I Compared Notes With One Of My Friends Who Expect Everything Of The Universe, And Is Disappointed When Anything Is Less Than The Best, And I Found That I Begin At The Other Extreme, Expecting Nothing, And Am Always Full Of Thanks For Moderate Good. . . . If We Will Take The Good We Find, . . . We Shall Have Heaping Measures. . . .

I Hate The Prostitution Of The Name Of Friendship To Signify Modish And Worldly Alliances.

The Soul Rules Over Matter. Matter May Pass Away Like A Mote In The Sunbeam, May Be Absorbed Into The Immensity Of God, As A Mistis Absorbed Into The Heat Of The Sun--but The Soul Is The Kingdom Of God, The Abode Of Love, Of Truth, Of Virtue.

Heat Of The Sun

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

No Matter What Your Work, Let It Be Your Own. No Matter What Your Occupation, Let What You Are Doing Be Organic. Let It Be In Your Bones. In This Way, You Will Open The Door By Which The Affluence Of Heaven And Earth Shall Stream Into You.

The Life Of Labor Does Not Make Men, But Drudges.

The Greatest Man In History Was The Poorest.

No Nation Has Produced Anything Like His Equal. There Is No Quality In The Human Mind, There Is No Class Of Topics, There Is No Region Of Thought, In Which He Has Not Soared Or Descended, And None In Which He Has Not Said The Commanding Word.

When I Have Attempted To Join Myself To Others By Services, It Proved An Intellectual Trick,-no More. They Eat Your Service Like Apples, And Leave You Out. But Love Them, And They Feel You, And Delight In You All The Time.

Solitude Is Impractical And Yet Society Is Fatal.

Let Us, If We Must Have Great Actions, Make Our Own So. All Action Is Of Infinite Elasticity, And The Least Admits Of Being Inflated With Celestial Air, Until It Eclipses The Sun And Moon.

Art And Power Will Go On As They Have Done,--will Make Day Out Of Night, Time Out Of Space, And Space Out Of Time.

We Must Have Kings, We Must Have Nobles; Nature Is Always Providing Such In Every Society; Only Let Us Have The Real Instead Of The Titular. In Every Society Some Are Born To Rule, And Some To Advise. The Chief Is The Chief All The World Over, Only Not His Cap And Plume. It Is Only This Dislike Of The Pretender Which Makes Men Sometimes Unjust To The True And Finished Man.

As We Are, So We Do; And As We Do, So Is It Done To Us; We Are The Builders Of Our Fortunes.

Intellect Is Void Of Affection And Sees An Object As It Stands In The Light Of Science, Cool And Disengaged. The Intellect Goes Out Of The Individual, Floats Over Its Own Personality, And Regards It As A Fact, And Not As I And Mine.

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.

It Is Better To Be A Thorn In The Side Of A Friend Than An Echo.

The Crowning Fortune Of A Man Is To Be Born To Some Pursuit Which Finds Him Employment And Happiness, Whether It Be To Make Baskets, Or Broadswords, Or Canals, Or Statues, Or Songs.

A System-grinder Hates The Truth.

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

Though We Travel The World Over To Find Beauty, We Must Carry It With Us Or We Find It Not . . . The Difference Between Landscape And Landscape Is Small, But There Is A Great Difference In Beholders.

Physical Force Has No Value, Where There Is Nothing Else. Snow In Snow-banks, Fire In Volcanoes And Solfataras Is Cheap. The Luxury Of Ice Is In Tropical Countries, And Midsummer Days. The Luxury Of Fire Is, To Have A Little On Our Hearth; And Of Electricity, Not The Volleys Of The Charged Cloud, But The Manageable Stream On The Battery-wires. So Of Spirit, Or Energy; The Rests Or Remains Of It In The Civil And Moral Man, Are Worth All The Cannibals In The Pacific.

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

Women, As Most Susceptible, Are The Best Index Of The Coming Hour.

Philanthropies And Charities Have A Certain Air Of Quackery.

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

The Book Written Against Fame And Learning Has The Author's Name On The Title-page.

We All Wish To Be Of Importance In One Way Or Another. The Child Coughs With Might And Main, Since It Has No Other Claim On The Company.

We Can See Well Into The Past; We Can Guess Shrewdly Into The Future, But That Which Is Rolled Up And Muffled In Impenetrable Folds Is Today.

The Eye Of Prudence May Never Shut.

In All Things I Would Have The Island Of A Man Inviolate. Let Us Sit Apart As The Gods, Talking From Peak To Peak All Round Olympus. No Degree Of Affection Need Invade This Religion.

We Do Not Want Actions, But Men; Not A Chemical Drop Of Water, But Rain; The Spirit That Sheds And Showers Actions, Countless, Endless Actions.

The Highest End Of Government Is The Culture Of Men.

A Man Is Usually More Careful Of His Money Than He Is Of His Principles.

We Are Imprisoned In Life In The Company Of Persons Powerfully Unlike Us.

So Shall We Come To Look At The World With New Eyes. It Shall Answer The Endless Inquiry Of The Intellect, — What Is Truth? And Of The Affections, — What Is Good? By Yielding Itself Passive To The Educated Will. ... Build, Therefore, Your Own World. As Fast As You Conform Your Life To The Pure Idea In Your Mind, That Will Unfold Its Great Proportions. A Correspondent Revolution In Things Will Attend The Influx Of The Spirit.

There Is No Great And No Small To The Soul That Maketh All.

I Wiped Away The Weeds And Foam, I Fetched My Sea-born Treasures Home; But The Poor, Unsightly, Noisome Things Had Left Their Beauty On The Shore, With The Sun And The Sand And The Wild Uproar.

The Powers Of The Soul Are Commensurate With Its Needs.

Nature Is Not Always Tricked In Holiday Attire, But The Same Scene Which Yesterday Breathed Perfume And Glittered As For The Frolic Of The Nymphs, Is Overspread With Melancholy Today. Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit.

My Son, A Perfect Little Boy Of Five Years And Three Months, Had Ended His Earthly Life. You Can Never Sympathize With Me; You Can Never Know How Much Of Me Such A Young Child Can Take Away. A Few Weeks Ago I Accounted Myself A Very Rich Man, And Now The Poorest Of All.

None Believeth In The Soul Of Man, But Only In Some Man Or Person Old And Departed.

A Man Is A God In Ruins.

The Paid Wealth Which Hundreds In The Community Acquire In Trade, Or By The Incessant Expansions Of Our Population And Arts, Enchants The Eyes Of All The Rest; The Luck Of One Is The Hope Of Thousands, And The Bribe Acts Like The Neighborhood Of A Gold Mine To Impoverish The Farm, The School, The Church, The House, And The Very Body And Feature Of Man.

Why Should I Cumber Myself With Regrets That The Receiver Is Not Capacious? It Never Troubles The Sun That Some Of His Rays Fall Wide And Vain Into Ungrateful Space, And Only A Small Part On The Reflecting Planet. Let Your Greatness Educate The Crude And Cold Companion.

Out Of Love And Hatred, Out Of Earnings And Borrowings And Leadings And Losses; Out Of Sickness And Pain; Out Of Wooing And Worshipping; Out Of Traveling And Voting And Watching And Caring; Out Of Disgrace And Contempt, Comes Our Tuition In The Serene And Beautiful Laws.

If A Teacher Have Any Opinion Which He Wishes To Conceal, His Pupils Will Become As Fully Indoctrinated Into That As Into Any Which He Publishes.

Intellect Annuls Fate. So Far As A Man Thinks He Is Free.

Some Of Your Griefs You Have Cured, And The Sharpest You Still Have Survived, But What Torments Of Grief You've Endured From Evils That Never Arrived.

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.

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.

There Is Creative Reading As Well As Creative Writing.

The Secret Of Drunkenness Is, That It Insulates Us In Thought, Whilst It Unites Us In Feeling.

But, If We Explore The Literature Of Heroism, We Shall Quickly Come To Plutarch, Who Is Its Doctor And Historian. To Him We Owe The Brasidas, The Dion, The Epaminodas, The Scipio Of Old, And I Must Think We Are More Deeply Indebted To Him Than To All The Ancient Writers. Each Of His "lives" Is A Refutation To The Despondency And Cowardice Of Our Religious And Political Theorists. A Wild Courage, A Stoicism Not Of The Schools, But Of The Blood, Shines In Every Anecdote, And Had Given That Book Immense Fame.

Every Mind Must Make Its Choice Between Truth And Repose. It Cannot Have Both.

If With Love Thy Heart Has Burned; If Thy Love Is Unreturned; Hide Thy Grief Within Thy Breast, Though It Tear Thee Unexpressed; For When Love Has Once Departed From The Eyes Of The False-hearted, And One By One Has Torn Off Quite The Bandages Of Purple Light; Though Thou Wert The Loveliest Form The Soul Had Ever Dressed, Thou Shalt Seem, In Each Reply, A Vixen To His Altered Eye; Thy Softest Pleadings Seem Too Bold, Thy Praying Lute Will Seem To Scold; Though Thou Kept The Straightest Road, Yet Thou Errest Far And Broad.

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

The Cure For False Theology Is Motherwit. Forget Your Books And Traditions, And Obey Your Moral Perceptions At This Hour.

A Good Indignation Makes An Excellent Speech.

If I Made Laws For Shakers Or A School, I Should Gazette Every Saturday All The Words They Were Wont To Use In Reporting Religious Experience, As "spiritual Life," "god," "soul," "cross," Etc., And If They Could Not Find New Ones Next Week, They Might Remain Silent.

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