Background Image

...

Idealism Sees The World In God. It Beholds The Whole Circle Of Persons And Things, Of Actions And Events, Of Country And Religion,not As Painfully Accumulated, Atom After Atom, Act After Act, In An Aged Creeping Past, But As One Vast Picture, Which God Paints On The Instant Eternity, For The Contemplation Of The Soul.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Idealism Sees The World

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Idealism Sees The World In God. It Beholds The Whole Circle Of Persons And Things, Of Actions And Events, Of Country And Religion,not As Painfully Accumulated, Atom After Atom, Act After Act, In An Aged Creeping Past, But As One Vast Picture, Which God Paints On The Instant Eternity, For The Contemplation Of The Soul.

Views: 10

Topic

More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Whoever Fights, Whoever Falls, Justice Conquers Evermore

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.

One Must Be An Inventor To Read Well.

Creative Writers

Everything Intercepts Us From Ourselves.

Good Criticism Is Very Rare And Always Precious.

For Flowers That Bloom About Our Feet; For Tender Grass, So Fresh, So Sweet; For Song Of Bird, And Hum Of Bee; For All Things Fair We Hear Or See, Father In Heaven, We Thank Thee!

Life Is Unnecessarily Long. Moments Of Insight, Of Fine Personal Relation, A Smile, A Glance,--what Ample Borrowers Of Eternity They Are!

Men Imagine That They Communicate Their Virtue Or Vice Only By Overt Actions, And Do Not See That Virtue Or Vice Emit A Breath Every Moment.

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 World Looks Like A Multiplication-table, Or A Mathematical Equation, Which, Turn It How You Will, Balances Itself.

Mathematical Equations

Every Man Believes He Has A Greater Possibility.

Society Is A Wave. The Wave Moves Onward, But The Water Of Which It Is Composed Does Not.

We Are The Prisoners Of Ideas. They Catch Us Up For Moments Into Their Heaven, And So Fully Engage Us, That We Take No Thought Forthe Morrow, Gaze Like Children, Without An Effort To Make Them Our Own.

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

Discontent Is Want Of Self-reliance; It Is Infirmity Of Will.

My Own Mind Is The Direct Revelation Which I Have From God And Far Least Liable To Mistake In Telling His Will Of Any Revelation.

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

We Live In Succession, In Division, In Parts, In Particles. Meantime Within Man Is The Soul Of The Whole; The Wise Silence; The Universal Beauty, To Which Every Part And Particle Is Equally Related; The Eternal One.

If We Shall Take The Good We Find, Asking No Questions, We Shall Have Heaping Measures.

Philosophically Considered, The Universe Is Composed Of Nature And The Soul.

All Good Conversation, Manners, And Action Come From A Spontaneity Which Forgets Usages And Makes The Moment Great.

Noblesse Oblige; Or, Superior Advantages Bind You To Larger Generosity.

Genius Has No Taste For Weaving Sand.

We Say The Cows Laid Out Boston. Well, There Are Worse Surveyors.

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.

With Most Men, Scarce A Link Of Memory Holds Yesterday And To-day Together.

When It's Dark Enough Men See Stars.

Pictures Must Not Be Too Picturesque.

For Poetry Was All Written Before Time Was, And Whenever We Are So Finely Organized That We Can Penetrate Into That Region Where The Air Is Music, We Hear Those Primal Warblings, And Attempt To Write Them Down, But We Lose Ever And Anon A Word, A Verse, And Substitute Something Of Our Own, And Thus Miswrite The Poem.

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.

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.

Astronomy To The Selfish Becomes Astrology.

Anatomy And Physiology

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 Religions We Call False Were Once True.

Who Hears Me, Who Understands Me, Becomes Mine, A Possession For All Time.

Anger Is That Powerful Internal Force That Blows Out The Light Of Reason.

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

The Finest Poetry Was First Experience.

We Are As Much Informed Of A Writer's Genius By What He Selects As By What He Originates. We Read The Quotation With His Eyes, Andfind A New And Fervent Sense; As A Passage From One Of The Poets, Well Recited, Borrows New Interest From The Rendering. As The Journals Say, "the Italics Are Ours.

When A Man Speaks The Truth In The Spirit Of Truth, His Eye Is As Clear As The Heavens. When He Has Base Ends, And Speaks Falsely, The Eye Is Muddy, And Sometimes Asquint.

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

Proportion Is Almost Impossible To Human Beings. There Is No One Who Does Not Exaggerate.

A Man Known To Us Only As A Celebrity In Politics Or In Trade, Gains Largely In Our Esteem If We Discover That He Has Some Intellectual Taste Or Skill.

The Philosophy Of Waiting Is Sustained By All The Oracles Of The Universe.

We Honor The Rich Because They Have Externally The Freedom, Power, And Grace Which We Feel To Be Proper To Man, Proper To Us.

It Is The Quality Of The Moment, Not The Number Of Days, Or Events, Or Of Actors, That Imports.

As Soon As A Child Has Left The Room His Strewn Toys Become Affecting.

Nature Is Upheld By Antagonism. Passions, Resistance, Danger, Are Educators. We Acquire The Strength We Have Overcome.

The Intelligent Have A Right Over The Ignorant, Namely, The Right Of Instructing Them. The Right Punishment Of One Out Of Tune, Isto Make Him Play In Tune; The Fine Which The Good, Refusing To Govern, Ought To Pay, Is, To Be Governed By A Worse Man; That His Guards Shall Not Handle Gold And Silver, But Shall Be Instructed That There Is Gold And Silver In Their Souls, Which Will Make Men Willing To Give Them Every Thing Which They Need.

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

Life Is Comic Or Pitiful As Soon As The High Ends Of Being Fade Out Of Sight, And Man Becomes Near-sighted, And Can Only Attend Towhat Addresses The Senses.

[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.

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

A Walk In The Woods Is Only An Exalted Dream.

The Essence Of All Jokes, Of All Comedy, Seems To Be An Honest Or Well Intended Halfness; A Non Performance Of That Which Is Pretended To Be Performed, At The Same Time That One Is Giving Loud Pledges Of Performance. The Balking Of The Intellect, Is Comedy And It Announces Itself In The Pleasant Spasms We Call Laughter.

The Bhagavad-gita Is An Empire Of Thought And In Its Philosophical Teachings Krishna Has All The Attributes Of The Full-fledged Montheistic Deity And At The Same Time The Attributes Of The Upanisadic Absolute.

It Is Bad Enough That Our Geniuses Cannot Do Anything Useful, But It Is Worse That No Man Is Fit For Society Who Has Fine Traits.he Is Admired At A Distance, But He Cannot Come Near Without Appearing A Cripple.

I Remember The Thought Which Occurred To Me When Some Ingenious And Spiritual Foreigners Came To America, Was, Have You Been Victimized In Being Brought Hither?--or, Prior To That, Answer Me This, "are You Victimizable?

The World Is Emblematic. Parts Of Speech Are Metaphors, Because The Whole Of Nature Is A Metaphor Of The Human Mind.

He Who Has A Thousand Friends Has Not A Friend To Spare, While He Who Has One Enemy Shall Meet Him Everywhere.

Few People Know How To Take A Walk. The Qualifications Are Endurance, Plain Clothes, Old Shoes, An Eye For Nature, Good Humor, Vast Curiosity, Good Speech, Good Silence And Nothing Too Much.

You Think Me The Child Of Circumstance; I Make My Circumstance.

Every Man Is Wanted, And No Man Is Wanted Much.

Great Works Of Art Have No More Affecting Lesson For Us Than This. They Teach Us To Abide By Our Own Spontaneous Expression With Good Humored Inflexibility Whether The Whole Cry Of Voices Is On The Other Side.

If There Be Any Man Who Thinks The Ruin Of A Race Of Men A Small Matter, Compared With The Last Decoration And Completions Of Hisown Comfort,--who Would Not So Much As Part With His Ice- Cream, To Save Them From Rapine And Manacles, I Think I Must Not Hesitate To Satisfy That Man That Also His Cream And Vanilla Are Safer And Cheaper By Placing The Negro Nation On A Fair Footing Than By Robbing Them.

Each Man, If He Attempts To Join Himself To Others, Is On All Sides Cramped And Diminished Of His Proportion; And The Stricter Theunion, The Smaller And The More Pitiful He Is. But Leave Him Alone, To Recognize In Every Hour And Place The Secret Soul, He Will Go Up And Down Doing The Works Of A True Member, And, To The Astonishment Of All, The Work Will Be Done With Concert, Though No Man Spoke.

The Whole Of Heraldry And Of Chivalry Is In Courtesy. A Man Of Fine Manners Shall Pronounce Your Name With All The Ornament That Titles Of Nobility Could Ever Add.

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

An Orator Or Author Is Never Successful Till He Has Learned To Make His Words Smaller Than His Ideas.

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.

There Is Always A Best Way Of Doing Everything, If It Be To Boil An Egg. Manners Are The Happy Ways Of Doing Things.

I Know Nothing Which Life Has To Offer So Satisfying As The Profound Good Understanding, Which Can Subsist, After Much Exchange Ofgood Offices, Between Two Virtuous Men, Each Of Whom Is Sure Of Himself, And Sure Of His Friend. It Is A Happiness Which Postpones All Other Gratifications, And Makes Politics, And Commerce, And Churches, Cheap.

When God Lets Loose A Great Thinker On This Planet, Then All Things Are At Risk. There Is Not A Piece Of Science But Its Flank May Be Turned To-morrow; Nor Any Literary Reputation Or The So-called Eternal Names Of Fame That Many Not Be Refused And Condemned.

He Only Is A Well-made Man Who Has A Good Determination. And The End Of Culture Is Not To Destroy This, God Forbid! But To Train Away All Impediment And Mixture And Leave Nothing But Pure Power.

The Best Part Of Health Is Fine Disposition

Romeo, Of Dead, Should Be Cut Up Into Little Stars To Make The Heavens Fine. Life, With This Pair, Has No Other Aim, Asks No More,than Juliet,--than Romeo.

There Is More Difference In The Quality Of Our Pleasures Than In The Amount.

The Astonishment Of Life Is The Absence Of Any Appearances Of Reconciliation Between The Theory And The Practice Of Life.

Go Put Your Creed Into Your Deed, Nor Speak With Double Tongue.

For All Men Live By Truth, And Stand In Need Of Expression. In Love, In Art, In Avarice, In Politics, In Labor, In Games, We Study To Utter Our Painful Secret. The Man Is Only Half Himself, The Other Half Is His Expression.

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 Aristocrat Is The Democrat Ripe, And Gone To Seed.

I Can Reason Down Or Deny Everything, Except This Perpetual Belly: Feed He Must And Will, And I Cannot Make Him Respectable.

They Who Talk Much Of Destiny, Their Birth-star, Etc., Are In A Lower Dangerous Plane, And Invite The Evils They Fear.

The Saint And Poet Seek Privacy To Ends The Most Public And Universal: And It Is The Secret Of Culture, To Interest The Man More In His Public, Than In His Private Quality.

Defect In Manners Is Usually The Defect Of Fine Perceptions. Elegance Comes Of No Breeding, But Of Birth.

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

Right Is More Beautiful Than Private Affection, And Is Compatible With Universal Wisdom.

The Unsaid Part Is The Best Of Every Discourse.

In America The Geography Is Sublime, But The Men Are Not; The Inventions Are Excellent, But The Inventors One Is Sometimes Ashamed Of.

A Determined Man, By His Very Attitude And The Tone Of His Voice, Puts A Stop To Defeat, And Begins To Conquer.

Where There Is No Vision A People Perish.

Cities Force Growth And Make Men Talkative And Entertaining, But They Make Them Artificial. What Possesses Interest For Us Is Thenatural Of Each, His Constitutional Excellence. This Is Forever A Surprise, Engaging And Lovely; We Cannot Be Satiated With Knowing It, And About It; And It Is This Which The Conversation With Nature Cherishes And Guards.

As Sunbeams Stream Through Liberal Space And Nothing Jostle Or Displace, So Waved The Pine-tree Through My Thought And Fanned The Dreams It Never Brought.

When He Is Pushed, Tormented, Defeated, He Has A Chance To Learn Something; He Has Been Put On His Wits, On His Manhood; He Has Gained Facts; Learns His Ignorance; Is Cured Of The Insanity Of Conceit; Has Got Moderation And Real Skill.

The Secret Of Success In Education Is Respecting The Students.

Secret To Success

Every Hero Becomes A Bore At Last.

A Rush Of Thoughts Is The Only Conceivable Prosperity That Can Come To Us.

The Good Writer Seems To Be Writing About Himself, But Has His Eye Always On That Thread Of The Universe Which Runs Through Himself And All Things.

Let Me Never Fall Into The Vulgar Mistake Of Dreaming That I Am Persecuted Whenever I Am Contradicted.

I Suffer Whenever I See That Common Sight Of A Parent Or Senior Imposing His Opinion And Way Of Thinking And Being On A Young Soul To Which They Are Totally Unfit. Cannot We Let People Be Themselves, And Enjoy Life In Their Own Way? You Are Trying To Make That Man Another You. One's Enough.

The Sciences, Even The Best,-mathematics And Astronomy,-are Like Sportsmen, Who Seize Whatever Prey Offers, Even Without Being Able To Make Any Use Of It.

He Takes Men Out Of Time And Makes Them Feel Eternity.

A Poem, A Sentence, Causes Us To See Ourselves. I Be, And I See My Being, At The Same Time.

It Is One Light Which Beams Out Of A Thousand Stars. It Is One Soul Which Animates All Men.

To Believe Your Own Thought, To Believe That What Is True For You In Your Private Heart, Is True For All Men - That Is Genius... Whoso Would Be A Man Must Be A Nonconformist... What I Must Do, Is All That Concerns Me; Not What The People Think... Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself; Nothing, But The Triumph Of Principles.

We Live Ruins Amid Ruins.

Men Wish To Be Saved From The Mischiefs Of Their Vices, But Not From Their Vices.

Live, Let Live, And Help Live

The World Globes Itself In A Drop Of Dew.

I Believe In Eternity. I Can Find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, And The Islands, - The Genius And Creative Principle Of Each And Of All Eras, In My Own Mind.

An Ounce Of Action Is Worth A Ton Of Theory.

The Sermon Which I Write Inquisitive Of Truth Is Good A Year After, But That Which Is Written Because A Sermon Must Be Writ Is Musty The Next Day.

Beauty Is The Mark God Sets Upon Virtue.

You Shall Have Joy, Or You Shall Have Power, Said God; You Shall Not Have Both.

I See That Sensible Men And Conscientious Men All Over The World Were Of One Religion Of Well-doing And Daring.

It Is Easy To See That What Is Best Written Or Done By Genius In The World, Was No Man's Work But Came By Wide Social Labor, Whena Thousand Wrought Like One, Sharing The Same Impulse.

Love And You Shall Be Loved. All Love Is Mathematically Just, As Much As Two Sides Of An Algebraic Equation.

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.

In Haydn's Oratorios, The Notes Present To The Imagination Not Only Motions, As, Of The Snake, The Stag, And The Elephant, But Colors Also; As The Green Grass.

Every Materialist Will Be An Idealist; But An Idealist Can Never Go Backward To Be A Materialist.

I Think No Virtue Goes With Size.

Immortality. I Notice That As Soon As Writers Broach This Question They Begin To Quote. I Hate Quotation. Tell Me What You Know.

A System-grinder Hates The Truth.

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.

How Much Finer Things Are In Composition Than Alone.

The Restraining Grace Of Common Sense Is The Mark Of All Valid Minds.

When A Man Lives With God, His Voice Shall Be As Sweet As The Murmur Of The Brook And Rustle Of The Corn.

Before A Leaf-bud Has Burst, Its Whole Life Acts; In The Full-blown Flower There Is No More; In The Leafless Root There Is No Less.

The Roses Under My Window Make No Reference To Former Roses Or Better Ones; They Are What They Are; They Exist With God Today. There Is No Time To Them. There Is Simply The Rose; It Is Perfect In Every Moment Of Its Existence.

We Are As Much Informed Of A Writer's Genius By What He Selects As By What He Originates.

Live In The Sunshine.

Expediency Of Literature, Reason Of Literature, Lawfulness Of Writing Down A Thought, Is Questioned; Much Is To Say On Both Sides,and, While The Fight Waxes Hot, Thou, Dearest Scholar, Stick To Thy Foolish Task, Add A Line Every Hour, And Between Whiles Add A Line.

The Goitre Of Egotism Is So Frequent Among Notable Persons, That We Must Infer Some Strong Necessity In Nature Which It Subserves;such As We See In The Sexual Attraction.

Trust Thyself: Every Heart Vibrates To That Iron String.

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

Every Fact Is Related On One Side To Sensation, And, On The Other, To Morals. The Game Of Thought Is, On The Appearance Of One Of These Two Sides, To Find The Other: Given The Upper, To Find The Under Side.

The Poet Knows That He Speaks Adequately, Then, Only When He Speaks Somewhat Wildly.

The Scholar May Lose Himself In Schools, In Words, And Become A Pedant; But When He Comprehends His Duties, He Above All Men Is Arealist, And Converses With Things.

The Mark Of The Man Of The World Is Absence Of Pretension. He Does Not Make A Speech; He Takes A Low Business-tone, Avoids All Brag, Is Nobody, Dresses Plainly, Promises Not At All, Performs Much, Speaks In Monosyllables, Hugs His Fact.

The Virtue In Most Request Is Conformity.

[d]ivine Providence... Keeps The Universe Open In Every Direction To The Soul.

Great Thoughts Ensure Musical Expression.

Musical Expression

We Must Set Up A Strong Present Tense Against All Rumors Of Wrath, Past And To Come.

We Can Only Be Valued As We Make Ourselves Valuable.

Nature Has Her Own Best Mode Of Doing Each Thing, And She Has Somewhere Told It Plainly, If We Will Keep Our Eyes And Ears Open. If Not, She Will Not Be Slow In Undeceiving Us, When We Prefer Our Own Way To Hers.

Beware When The Great God Lets Loose A Thinker On This Planet. Then All Things Are At Risk. It Is As When A Conflagration Has Broken Out In A Great City, And No Man Knows What Is Safe, Or Where It Will End.

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.

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

There Is No One Who Does Not Exaggerate!

Exaggeration Is

To Be Great Is To Be Misunderstood.

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

All Infractions Of Love And Equity In Our Social Relations Are Speedily Punished-by Fear...be Honest With A Man And You Have No Fear. Try To Deceive And The Relationship Deteriorates.

Man Sheds Grief As His Skin Sheds Rain.

Every Person Has His Or Her Own Vocation-talent Is The Call.

All Great Masters Are Chiefly Distinguished By The Power Of Adding A Second, A Third, And Perhaps A Fourth Step In A Continuous Line. Many A Man Has Taken The First Step. With Every Additional Step You Enhance Immensely The Value Of Your First.

Plato Is Philosophy, And Philosophy, Plato,--at Once The Glory And The Shame Of Mankind, Since Neither Saxon Nor Roman Have Availed To Add Any Idea To His Categories.

Extremes Meet, And There Is No Better Example Than The Naughtiness Of Humility.

The Reverence For The Scriptures Is An Element Of Civilization, For Thus Has The History Of The World Been Preserved, And Is Preserved.

You Cannot Do Wrong Without Suffering Wrong.

Classics Which At Home Are Drowsily Read Have A Strange Charm In A Country Inn, Or In The Transom Of A Merchant Brig.

But What Help From These Fineries Or Pedantries? What Help From Thought? Life Is Not Dialectics. We, I Think, In These Times, Have Had Lessons Enough Of The Futility Of Criticism.

How Beautiful To Have The Church Always Open, So That Every Tired Wayfaring Man May Come In And Be Soothed By All That Art Can Suggest Of A Better World When He Is Weary With This.

I Will Do Strongly Before The Sun And Moon Whatever Inly Rejoices Me And The Heart Apoints.

The Secret Of Poetry Is Never Explained,— Is Always New. We Have Not Got Farther Than Mere Wonder At The Delicacy Of The Touch, And The Eternity It Inherits. In Every House A Child That In Mere Play Utters Oracles, And Knows Not That They Are Such. 't Is As Easy As Breath. 't Is Like This Gravity, Which Holds The Universe Together, And None Knows What It Is.

People Who Wash Much Have A High Mind About It, And Talk Down To Those Who Wash Little.

The Things We Now Esteem Fixed Shall, One By One, Detach Themselves, Like Ripe Fruit, From Our Experience, And Fall. The Wind Shall Blow Them None Knows Whither.

The World Is The Perennial Miracle Which The Soul Worketh.

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.

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.

Thought Is The Seed Of Action; But Action Is As Much Its Second Form As Thought Is Its First. It Rises In Thought, To The End That It May Be Uttered And Acted. Always In Proportion To The Depth Of Its Sense Does It Knock Importunately At The Gates Of The Soul, To Be Spoken, To Be Done.

I Like Man, But Not Men.

History Is Full, Down To This Day, Of The Imbecility Of Kings And Governors. They Are A Class Of Persons Much To Be Pitied, For They Know Not What They Should Do.

When Half-gods Go The Gods Arrive.

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.

A Hero Is No Braver Than An Ordinary Man, But He Is Brave Five Minutes Longer.

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.

Never Try To Make Anyone Like You: You Know, And God Knows, That One Of You Is Enough.

Add Energy, Inspire Hope, And Blow The Coals Into A Useful Flame.

A Healthy Soul Stands United With The Just And The True, As The Magnet Arranges Itself With The Pole, So That He Stands To All Beholders Like A Transparent Object Betwixt Them And The Sun, And Whoso Journeys Towards The Sun, Journeys Towards That Person. He Is Thus The Medium Of The Highest Influence To All Who Are Not On The Same Level.

Whenever The Average Intellect Of The Clergy Declines In The Balance With The Average Intellect Of The People The Churches Will Be Shut Up And A New Order Of Things [will] Begin.

If I Could Put My Hand On The North Star, Would It Be As Beautiful? The Sea Is Lovely, But When We Bathe In It The Beauty Forsakesall The Near Water. For The Imagination And Senses Cannot Be Gratified At The Same Time.

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.

Invention Breeds Invention. No Sooner Is The Electric Telegraph Devised Than Gutta-percha, The Very Material It Requires, Is Found. The Aeronaut Is Provided With Gun-cotton, The Very Fuel He Wants For His Balloon.

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.

Write It On Your Heart That Every Day Is The Best Day In The Year. He Is Rich Who Owns The Day, And No One Owns The Day Who Allows It To Be Invaded With Fret And Anxiety. Finish Every Day And Be Done With It. You Have Done What You Could. Some Blunders And Absurdities, No Doubt Crept In. Forget Them As Soon As You Can, Tomorrow Is A New Day; Begin It Well And Serenely, With Too High A Spirit To Be Cumbered With Your Old Nonsense. This New Day Is Too Dear, With Its Hopes And Invitations, To Waste A Moment On The Yesterdays.

A Man Must Know How To Estimate A Sour Face. The Sour Face Of The Multitude, Like Thier Sweet Faces, Have No Deep Cause, But Are Put On And Off As The Wind Blows And The Newspaper Directs.

I Wish That Friendship Should Have Feet, As Well As Eyes And Eloquence. It Must Plant Itself On The Ground, Before It Vaults Overthe Moon. I Wish It To Be A Little Of A Citizen, Before It Is Quite A Cherub.

The Beautiful Rests On The Foundations Of The Necessary.

My Tongue Is Prone To Lose The Way,not So My Pen, For In A Letterwe Have Not Better Things To Say,but Surely Put Them Better.

Why Needs A Man Be Rich? Why Must He Have Horses, Fine Garments, Handsome Apartments, Access To Public Houses, And Places Of Amusement? Only For Want Of Thought.

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

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

Who Are The Farmer's Servants? ... Geology And Chemistry, The Quarry Of The Air, The Water Of The Brook, The Lightning Of The Cloud, The Castings Of The Worm, The Plough Of The Frost.

Life Must Be Lived On A Higher Plane. We Must Go Up To A Higher Platform, To Which We Are Always Invited To Ascend; There, The Whole Aspect Of Things Changes.

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

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.

Why Should We Grope Among The Dry Bones Of The Past, Or Put The Living Generation Into Masquerade Out Of Its Faded Wardrobe?

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

Trending Author

Stephane Mallarme

Alan Dershowitz

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

William Morris Hunt

Category