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I Remember An Answer Which When Quite Young I Was Prompted To Make A Valued Adviser Who Was Wont To Importune Me With The Dear Old Doctrines Of The Church. On My Saying, What Have I To Do With The Sacredness Of Traditions, If I Live Wholly From Within? My Friend Suggested, - "but These Impulses May Be From Below, Not From Above." I Replied, 'they Do Not Seem To Me To Be Such; But If I Am The Devil's Child, I Will Live Then From The Devil.'

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Remember An Answer

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I Remember An Answer Which When Quite Young I Was Prompted To Make A Valued Adviser Who Was Wont To Importune Me With The Dear Old Doctrines Of The Church. On My Saying, What Have I To Do With The Sacredness Of Traditions, If I Live Wholly From Within? My Friend Suggested, - "but These Impulses May Be From Below, Not From Above." I Replied, 'they Do Not Seem To Me To Be Such; But If I Am The Devil's Child, I Will Live Then From The Devil.'

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The Affections Cannot Keep Their Youth Any More Than Men.

Have Mountains, And Waves, And Skies, No Significance But What We Consciously Give Them, When We Employ Them As Emblems Of Our Thoughts?

Is It Not Better To Intimate Our Astonishment As We Pass Through This World If It Be Only For A Moment Ere We Are Swallowed Up In The Yeast Of The Abyss? I Will Lift Up My Hands And Say Kosmos.

"though Many Painters And Sculptors Talk Glibly Of "going In For Photography," You Will Find That Very Few Of Them Can Ever Make A Picture By Photography; They Lack The Science, Technical Knowledge, And Above All The Practice. Most People Think They Can Play Tennis, Shoot, Write Novels, And Photograph As Well As Any Other Person - Until They Try."

All Natural Objects Make A Kindred Impression, When The Mind Is Open To Their Influence.

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

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

Our Desires Presage The Capacities Within Us; They Are Harbingers Of What We Shall Be Able To Accomplish. What We Can Do And Want To Do Is Projected In Our Imagination, Quite Outside Ourselves, And Into The Future. We Are Attracted To What Is Already Ours In Secret. Thus Passionate Anticipation Transforms What Is Indeed Possible Into Dreamt-for Reality.

He Is Only Rich Who Owns The Day. There Is No King, Rich Man, Fairy, Or Demon Who Possesses Such Power As That.

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

There Is No Good Theory Of Disease Which Does Not At Once Suggest A Cure.

The Great Man, That Is, The Man Most Imbued With The Spirit Of The Time, Is The Impressionable Man.

Who Shall Forbid A Wise Skepticism, Seeing That There Is No Practical Question On Which Anything More Than An Approximate Solution Can Be Had?

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?

Some People Are Born Very Far From Home.

The Best Picture Makes Us Say, I Am A Painter Also.

Let Him Be Great, And Love Shall Follow Him. Nothing Is More Deeply Punished Than The Neglect Of The Affinities By Which Alone Society Should Be Formed, And The Insane Levity Of Choosing Associates By Others Eyes.

Shakespeare Will Never Be Made By The Study Of Shakespeare.

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

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

I Look On Sculpture As History. I Do Not Think The Apollo And The Jove Impossible In Flesh And Blood. Every Trait The Artist Recorded In Stone, He Had Seen In Life, And Better Than His Copy.

Man Moves In All Modes, By Legs Of Horses, By Wings Of Winds, By Steam, By Gas Of Balloon, By Electricity, And Stands On Tiptoe Threatening To Hunt The Eagle In His Own Element.

The Manly Part Is To Do With Might And Main What You Can Do.

No Hope So Bright But Is The Beginning Of Its Own Fulfilment.

Therefore We Value The Poet. All The Argument And All The Wisdom Is Not In The Encyclopedia, Or The Treatise On Metaphysics, Or The Body Of Divinity, But In The Sonnet Or The Play.

Eyes Are Bold As Lions,--roving, Running, Leaping, Here And There, Far And Near. They Speak All Languages. They Wait For No Introduction; They Are No Englishmen; Ask No Leave Of Age Or Rank; They Respect Neither Property Nor Riches, Neither Learning Nor Power, Nor Virtue, Nor Sex, But Intrude, And Come Again, And Go Through And Through You In A Moment Of Time. What Inundation Of Life And Thought Is Discharged From One Soul Into Another Through Them!

A Good Indignation Makes An Excellent Speech.

The Dead Sleep In Their Moonless Night; My Business Is With The Living.

Language Is The Archives Of History.

If We Live Truly, We Shall See Truly. It Is As Easy For The Strong Man To Be Strong, As It Is For The Weak To Be Weak.

The Perception Of The Comic Is A Tie Of Sympathy With Other Men, A Pledge Of Sanity, And A Protection From Those Perverse Tendencies And Gloomy Insanities In Which Fine Intellects Sometimes Lose Themselves. A Rogue Alive To The Ludicrous Is Still Convertible. If That Sense Is Lost, His Fellow-men Can Do Little For Him.

Some Will Always Be Above Others. Destroy The Inequality Today, And It Will Appear Again Tomorrow.

A Seashell Should Be The Crest Of England, Not Only Because It Represents A Power Built On The Waves, But Also The Hard Finish Ofthe Men. The Englishman Is Finished Like A Cowry Or A Murex.

Astronomy Taught Us Our Insignificance In Nature.

If You Would Know What Nobody Knows, Read What Everybody Reads, Just One Year Afterwards.

Tis The Old Secret Of The Gods That They Come In Low Disguises.

Prayer As A Means To Effect A Private End Is Theft And Meanness.

Every Natural Fact Is A Symbol Of Some Spiritual Fact.

Each Work Of Art Excludes The World, Concentrates Attention On Itself. For The Time It Is The Only Thing Worth Doing -to Do Just That; Be It A Sonnet, A Statue, A Landscape, An Outline Head Of Caesar, Or An Oration. Presently We Return To The Sight Of Another That Globes Itself Into A Whole As Did The First, For Example, A Beautiful Garden; And Nothing Seems Worth Doing In Life But Laying Out A Garden.

The Visible Heavens And Earth Sympathize With Jesus.

I Dip My Pen In The Blackest Ink, Because I'm Not Afraid Of Falling Into My Inkpot.

The Gentleman Is A Man Of Truth.

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

The Secret Of Success In Society Is A Certain Heartiness And Sympathy.

Secret To Success

The Miracles Of Genius Always Rest On Profound Convictions Which Refuse To Be Analyzed.

Every Man Alone Is Sincere. At The Entrance Of A Second Person, Hypocrisy Begins

Prosperity Is Something The Businessmen Created For Politicians To Take Credit For

The Objection To Conforming To Usages That Have Become Dead To You Is, That It Scatters Your Force.

Every Young Man Is Prone To Be Misled By The Suggestions Of His Own Ill-founded Ambition Which He Mistakes For The Promptings Of Asecret Genius, And Thence Dreams Of Unrivaled Greatness.

We May Be Partial, But Fate Is Not.

But Lest I Should Mislead Any When I Have My Own Head And Obey My Whims, Let Me Remind The Reader That I Am Only An Experimenter.do Not Set The Least Value On What I Do, Or The Least Discredit On What I Do Not, As If I Pretended To Settle Any Thing As True Or False. I Unsettle All Things. No Facts Are To Me Sacred; None Are Profane; I Simply Experiment, An Endless Seeker With No Past At My Back.

When All Shoot At One Mark, The Gods Join In The Combat.

Love Is The Bright Foreigner, The Foreign Self.

An Institution Is The Lengthened Shadow Of One Man.

Literature Is Eavesdropping.

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

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

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

It Is For Want Of Self-culture That The Superstition Of Travelling, Whose Idols Are Italy, England, Egypt, Retains Its Fascinationfor All Educated Americans.

The World Globes Itself In A Drop Of Dew.

Great Men Are More Distinguished By Range And Extent Than By Originality.

The Health Of The Eye Seems To Demand A Horizon. We Are Never Tired, So Long As We Can See Far Enough.

Strong Men Greet War, Tempest, Hard Times. They Wish, As Pindar Said, To Tread The Floors Of Hell, With Necessities As Hard As Iron.

Aristotle And Plato Are Reckoned The Respective Heads Of Two Schools. A Wise Man Will See That Aristotle Platonizes.

Shall We Then Judge A Country By The Majority, Or By The Minority? By The Minority, Surely.

If The Red Slayer Think He Slays, Or If The Slain Think He Is Slain, They Know Not Well The Subtle Ways, I Keep And Pass And Turn Again.

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

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

The American Who Has Been Confined, In His Own Country, To The Sight Of Buildings Designed After Foreign Models, Is Surprised On Entering York Minster Or St. Peter's At Rome, By The Feeling That These Structures Are Imitations Also,--faint Copies Of An Invisible Archetype.

Solitude, The Safeguard Of Mediocrity, Is To Genius, The Stern Friend, The Cold, Obscure Shelter Where Moult The Wings Which Will Bear It Farther Than Suns And Stars.

Wise Cultivated, Genial Conversation Is The Last Flower Of Civilization, And The Best Result Which Life Has To Offer Us,--a Cup For Gods, Which Has No Repentance. Conversation Is Our Account Of Ourselves. All We Have, All We Can, All We Know, Is Brought Into Play, And As The Reproduction In Finer Form, Of All Our Havings.

The Finished Man Of The World Must Eat Of Every Apple Once.

We Want But Two Or Three Friends, But These We Cannot Do Without, And They Serve Us In Every Thought We Think.

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

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

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

Our Debt To Tradition Through Reading And Conversation Is So Massive, Our Protest So Rare And Insignificant-and This Commonly On The Ground Of Other Reading And Hearing-that In Large Sense, One Would Say There Is No Pure Originality. All Minds Quote. Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands. By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. It Is As Difficult To Appropriate The Thoughts Of Others As It Is To Invent.

Far Off, Men Swell, Bully, And Threaten; Bring Them Hand To Hand, And They Are Feeble Folk.

Show Me A Man Who Has Acted, And Who Has Not Been The Victim And Slave Of His Action. What They Have Done Commits And Enforces Them To Do The Same Again. The First Act, Which Was To Be An Experiment, Becomes A Sacrament.

Go Into One Of Our Cool Churches, And Begin To Count The Words That Might Be Spared, And In Most Places The Entire Sermon Will Go.

Friendship Should Be Surrounded With Ceremonies And Respects, And Not Crushed Into Corners.

Use Makes A Better Soldier Than The Most Urgent Considerations Of Duty,--familiarity With Danger Enabling Him To Estimate The Danger. He Sees How Much Is The Risk, And Is Not Afflicted With Imagination; Knows Practically Marshal Saxe's Rule, That Every Soldier Killed Costs The Enemy His Weight In Lead.

A Cheerful, Intelligent Face Is The End Of Culture.

The Best University That Can Be Recommended To A Man Of Ideas Is The Gauntlet Of The Mob.

Character Is That Which Can Do Without Success.

Let Us Even Bid Our Dearest Friends Farewell, And Defy Them, Saying, "who Are You? Unhand Me: I Will Be Dependent No More." Ah! Seest Thou Not, O Brother, That Thus We Part Only To Meet Again On A Higher Platform, And Only Be More Each Other's, Because We Are More Our Own?

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.

Nature Never Hurries: Atom By Atom, Little By Little, She Achieves Her Work. The Lesson One Learns From Yachting Or Planting Is The Manners Of Nature; Patience With The Delays Of Wind And Sun, Delays Of The Seasons, Bad Weather, Excess Or Lack Of Water.

The Trail Of The Serpent Reaches Into All The Lucrative Professions And Practices Of Man. Each Has Its Own Wrongs. Each Finds A Tender And Very Intelligent Conscience A Disqualification For Success. Each Requires Of The Practitioner A Certain Shutting Of The Eyes, A Certain Dapperness And Compliance, An Acceptance Of Customs, A Sequestration From The Sentiments Of Generosity And Love, A Compromise Of Private Opinion And Lofty Integrity.

There Are Twenty Ways Of Going To A Point, And One Is The Shortest; But Set Out At Once On One. A Man Who Has That Presence Of Mind Which Can Bring To Him On The Instant All He Knows, Is Worth For Action A Dozen Men Who Know As Much, But Can Only Bring It To Light Slowly.

Presence Of Mind

Man Was Born To Be Rich, Or Grow Rich By Use Of His Faculties, By The Union Of Thought With Nature. Property Is An Intellectual Production. The Game Requires Coolness, Right Reasoning, Promptness, And Patience In The Players.

If The Aristocrat Is Only Valid In Fashionable Circles, And Not With Truckmen, He Will Never Be A Leader In Fashion; And If The Man Of The People Cannot Speak On Equal Terms With The Gentleman, So That The Gentleman Shall Perceive That He Is Already Really Of His Own Order, He Is Not To Be Feared.

The Sentence Must Also Contain Its Own Apology For Being Spoken.

The Great Majority Of Men Are Bundles Of Beginnings

Each Truth That A Writer Acquires Is A Lantern, Which He Turns Full On What Facts And Thoughts Lay Already In His Mind, And Behold, All The Mats And Rubbish Which Had Littered His Garret Become Precious. Every Trivial Fact In His Private Biography Becomes An Illustration Of This New Principle, Revisits The Day, And Delights All Men By Its Piquancy And New Charm.

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.

Overhead The Sanctities Of The Stars Shine Forever-more... Pouring Satire On The Pompous Business Of The Day Which They Close, And Making The Generations Of Men Show Slight And Evanescent.

This Book Of Montaigne The World Has Endorsed By Translating It Into All Tongues.

The Book Of Nature Is The Book Of Fate. She Turns The Gigantic Pages, Leaf After Leaf Never Returning One.

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

We Boil At Different Degrees.

Being Different

Nature Never Sends A Great Man Into The Planet, Without Confiding The Secret To Another Soul.

Every Roof Is Agreeable To The Eye, Until It Is Lifted; Then We Find Tragedy And Moaning Women, And Hard-eyed Husbands.

The Student Is To Read History Actively And Not Passively; To Esteem His Own Life The Text, And Books The Commentary. Thus Compelled, The Muse Of History Will Utter Oracles As Never To Those Who Do Not Respect Themselves.

Think Me Not Unkind And Rude That I Walk Alone In Grove And Glen; I Go To The God Of The Wood To Fetch His Word To Men.

I Am A Willow Of The Wilderness, Loving The Wind That Bent Me.

Is Not Marriage An Open Question, When It Is Alleged, From The Beginning Of The World, That Such As Are In The Institution Wish To Get Out, And Such As Are Out Wish To Get In?

What Torments Of Grief You Endured, From Evils That Never Arrived

The Reason Why The World Lacks Unity, And Lies Broken And In Heaps, Is, Because Man Is Disunited With Himself.

The Pest Of Society Are The Egotist, They Are Dull And Bright, Sacred And Profane, Course And Fine. It Is A Disease That Like The Flu Falls On All Constitutions.

The Only Prudence In Life Is Concentration.

Focus And Concentration

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?

There Is No Thought In Any Mind, But It Quickly Tends To Convert Itself Into Power.

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

Enlarge Not Thy Destiny, Said The Oracle: Endeavor Not To Do More Than Is Given Thee In Charge.

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.

O Lord! Unhappy Is The Man Whom Man Can Make Unhappy.

What Is The City In Which We Sit Here, But An Aggregate Of Incongruous Materials, Which Have Obeyed The Will Of Some Man?

Hast Thou Named All The Birds Without A Gun?

A Scholar Is A Candle Which The Love And Desire Of All Men Will Light.

To Be A Star, You Must Shine Your Own Light, Follow Your Path, And Don't Worry About The Darkness, For That Is When The Stars Shine Brightest. Always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.

We Must Trust Infinitely To The Beneficent Necessity Which Shines Through All Laws. Human Nature Expresses Itself In Them As Characteristically As In Statues, Or Songs, Or Railroads, And An Abstract Of The Codes Of Nations Would Be An Abstract Of The Common Conscience.

There Is No Planet, Sun, Or Star Could Hold You If You But Knew What You Are.

When The Vain Speaker Has Sat Down, And The People Say 'what A Good Speech,' It Still Takes An Ounce To Balance An Ounce.

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.

There Is No Doctrine Of The Reason Which Will Bear To Be Taught By The Understanding.

He Is Great Who Confers The Most Benefits.

Do Not Be Caught By The Sensational In Nature, As A Coarse Red-faced Sunset, A Garrulous Waterfall, Or A Fifteen Thousand Foot Mountain... Avoid Prettiness - The Word Looks Much Like Pettiness - And There Is But Little Difference Between Them.

In Youth, We Clothe Ourselves With Rainbows, With Hope & Love, & Go As Brave As The Zodiack. In Age We Put Out Another Sort Of Perspiration; Gout, Fever, Rheumatism, Caprice, Doubt, Fretting, And Avarice.

People Destined To Meet Will Do So, Apparently By Chance, At Precisely The Right Moment.

The Man, Who Has Seen The Rising Moon Break Out Of The Clouds At Midnight, Has Been Present Like An Archangel At The Creation Of Light And Of The World.

Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself. Nothing Can Bring You Peace But The Triumph Of Principles.

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

You Are Constantly Invited To Be What You Are.

Science Finds It Methods.

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.

By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. In Fact, It Is As Difficult To Appropriate The Thoughts Of Others As It Is To Invent.

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

Whom God Has Put Asunder, Why Should Man Put Together?

To Fill The Hour──that Is Happiness.

Time Management

When I First Open My Eyes Upon The Morning Meadows And Look Out Upon The Beautiful World, I Thank God I Am Alive.

We Do Not Count A Man's Years Until He Has Nothing Else To Count.

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.

Don't Be A Cynic And Disconsolate Preacher. Don't Bewail And Moan. Omit The Negative Propositions. Challenge Us With Incessant Affirmatives.

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

Every Man Finds A Sanction For His Simplest Claims And Deeds, In Decisions Of His Own Mind, Which He Calls Truth And Holiness.

Everything In Our World, Even A Drop Of Dew, Is A Microcosm Of The Universe.

When You Were Born You Were Crying And Everyone Else Was Smiling. Live Your Life So At The End, Your're The One Who Is Smiling And Everyone Else Is Crying.

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

When I Read A Good Book, I Wish My Life Were Three Thousand Years Long.

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

We Say Love Is Blind, And The Figure Of Cupid Is Drawn With A Bandage Around His Eyes. Blind - Yes, Because He Does Not See What He Does Not Like; But The Sharpest-sighted Hunter In The Universe Is Love For Finding What He Seeks, And Only That.

Ethics And Religion Differ Herein; That The One Is The System Of Human Duties Commencing From Man; The Other, From God. Religion Includes The Personality Of God; Ethics Does Not.

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

A Scholar Does Not Wish To Be Always Pumping His Brains; He Wants Gossips.

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

Beside All The Moral Benefit Which We May Expect From The Farmer's Profession, When A Man Enters It Considerately, This Promised The Conquering Of The Soil, Plenty, And Beyond This, The Adorning Of The Country With Every Advantage And Ornament Which Labor, Ingenuity, And Affection For A Man's Home, Could Suggest.

Come Out Of The Azure. Love The Day. Do Not Leave The Sky Out Of Your Landscape.

Evil Is Merely Privative, Not Absolute: It Is Like Cold, Which Is The Privation Of Beat.

In The Country, Without Any Interference From The Law, The Agricultural Life Favors The Permanence Of Families.

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

In Eloquence, The Great Triumphs Of The Art Are When The Orator Is Lifted Above Himself; When Consciously He Makes Himself The Mere Tongue Of The Occasion And The Hour, And Says What Cannot But Be Said. Hence The Term "abandonment" To Describe The Self- Surrender Of The Orator. Not His Will, But The Principle On Which He Is Horsed, The Great Connection And Crisis Of Events, Thunder In The Ear Of The Crowd.

[w]e Pity Our Fathers For Dying Before Steam And Galvanism, Sulphuric Ether And Ocean Telegraphs, Photograph And Spectrograph Arrived, As Cheated Out Of Their Human Estate.

Every Mind Has A New Compass, A New Direction Of Its Own, Differencing Its Genius And Aim From Every Other Mind.--we Call This Specialty The Bias Of Each Individual. And None Of Us Will Ever Accomplish Anything Excellent Or Commanding Except When He Listens To This Whisper Which Is Heard By Him Alone.

We Are Adapted To Infinity. We Are Hard To Please, And Love Nothing Which Ends: And In Nature Is No End; But Every Thing, At The End Of One Use, Is Lifted Into A Superior, And The Ascent Of These Things Climbs Into Daemonic And Celestial Natures.

The Amount Of A Man's Wealth Consists In The Number Of Things He Can Do Without.

There Is An Intimate Interdependence Of Intellect And Morals.

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.

Our First Mistake Is The Belief That The Circumstance Gives The Joy Which We Give To The Circumstance.

What We Call Results Are Beginnings.

A Complete Man Should Need No Auxiliaries To His Personal Presence.

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.

The Vulgar Call Good Fortune That Which Really Is Produced By The Calculations Of Genius.

What Is A Weed? A Plant Whose Virtues Have Never Been Discovered.

In Dealing With The State, We Ought To Remember That Its Institutions Are Not Aboriginal, Though They Existed Before We Were Born; That They Are Not Superior To The Citizen; That Every One Of Them Was Once The Act Of A Single Man; Every Law And Usage Was A Man's Expedient To Meet A Particular Case; That They All Are Imitable, All Alterable; We May Make As Good; We May Make Better.

Black Men Built The Railroads, Not Blue Eyes.

[a]s If Life Were A Thunder-storm Wherein You Can See By A Flash The Horizon, And Then Cannot See Your Hand.

There Are Other Measures Of Self-respect For A Man, Than The Number Of Clean Shirts He Puts On Every Day.

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.

All Promise Outruns Performance.

I Grieve That Grief Can Teach Me Nothing, Nor Carry Me One Step Into Real Nature.

The Basis Of Good Manners Is Self-reliance.

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

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

I Know And See Too Well, When Not Voluntarily Blind, The Speedy Limits Opersons Called High And Worthy.

It Is God In You That Responds To God Without, Or Affirms His Own Words Trembling On The Lips Of Another.

There Are Two Laws Discretenot Reconciled,law For Man, And Law For Thing.

Progress Is The Activity Of Today And The Assurance Of Tomorrow

My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

It Is Not An Arbitrary "decree Of God," But In The Nature Of Man, That A Veil Shuts Down On The Facts Of To-morrow; For The Soul Will Not Have Us Read Any Other Cipher Than That Of Cause And Effect. By This Veil, Which Curtains Events, It Instructs The Children Of Men To Live In To-day.

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.

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

Nature Has Made Up Her Mind That What Cannot Defend Itself Shall Not Be Defended.

A Man Is The Prisoner Of His Power. A Topical Memory Makes Him An Almanac; A Talent For Debate, Disputant; Skill To Get Money Makes Him A Miser, That Is, A Beggar. Culture Reduces These Inflammations By Invoking The Aid Of Other Powers Against The Dominant Talent, And By Appealing To The Rank Of Powers. It Watches Success.

Money Often Costs Too Much.

Greatest Wealth

No Matter How Often Defeated, You Are Born To Victory.

To The Young Mind Every Thing Is Individual, Stands By Itself. By And By, It Finds How To Join Two Things And See In Them One Nature; Then Three, Then Three Thousand; And So, Tyrannized Over By Its Own Unifying Instinct, It Goes On Tying Things Together, Diminishing Anomalies, Discovering Roots Running Under Ground Whereby Contrary And Remote Things Cohere And Flower Out From One Stem.

I Do Not Wish To Please Him; I Wish That He Should Wish To Please Me.

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.

Christianity Taught The Capacity, The Element, To Love The All-perfect Without A Stingy Bargain For Personal Happiness. It Taught That To Love Him Was Happiness;--to Love Him In Others' Virtues.

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