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If You Would Serve Your Brother It Is Fit For You To Serve Him, Do Not Take Back Your Words When You Find That Prudent People Do Not Commend You. Be True To Your Own Act, And Congratulate Yourself If You Have Done Something Strange And Extravagant And Broken The Monotony Of A Decorous Age.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If You Would Serve

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If You Would Serve Your Brother It Is Fit For You To Serve Him, Do Not Take Back Your Words When You Find That Prudent People Do Not Commend You. Be True To Your Own Act, And Congratulate Yourself If You Have Done Something Strange And Extravagant And Broken The Monotony Of A Decorous Age.

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There Is No Prosperity, Trade, Art, City, Or Great Material Wealth Of Any Kind, But If You Trace It Home, You Will Find It Rooted In A Thought Of Some Individual Man.

The Advantage In Education Is Always With Those Children Who Slip Up Into Life Without Being Objects Of Notice.

Our Life Is Not So Much Threatened As Our Perception. Ghostlike We Glide Through Nature, And Should Not Know Our Place Again.

If We Will Take The Good We Find, Asking No Questions, We Shall Have Heaping Measures. The Great Gifts Are Not Got By Analysis. Everything Good Is On The Highway. The Middle Region Of Our Being Is The Temperate Zone.

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

Nothing Will Supply The Want Of Sunshine To Peaches, And, To Make Knowledge Valuable, You Must Have The Cheerfulness Of Wisdom. Whenever You Are Sincerely Pleased You Are Nourished. The Joy Of The Spirit Indicates Its Strength. All Healthy, Things Are Sweet-tempered. Genius Works In Sport, And Goodness Smiles To The Last.

Sometimes We Receive The Power To Say Yes To Life. Then Peace Enters Us And Makes Us Whole.

Life Has No Memory. That Which Proceeds In Succession Might Be Remembered, But That Which Is Coexistent, Or Ejaculated From A Deeper Cause, As Yet Far From Being Conscious, Knows Not Its Own Tendency.

Infancy Conforms To Nobody; All Conform To It.

The Peril Of Every Fine Faculty Is The Delight Of Playing With It For Pride. Talent Is Commonly Developed At The Expense Of Character, And The Greater It Grows, The More Is The Mischief. Talent Is Mistaken For Genius, A Dogma Or System For Truth, Ambition For Greatness, Ingenuity For Poetry, Sensuality For Art.

The Difference Between Talent And Genius Is That Talent Says Things Which He Has Never Heard But Once, And Genius Things Which He Has Never Heard.

But Only That Soul Can Be My Friend Which I Encounter On The Line Of My Own March, That Soul To Which I Do Not Decline, And Which Does Not Decline Me, But, Native Of The Same Celestial Latitude, Repeats In Its Own All My Experience.

There Is Hope In Extravagance, There Is None In Routine.

He Decided To Give Up His Large Ambition Of Knowledge And Action For Any Narrow Craft Or Profession, Aiming At A Much More Comprehensive Calling, The Art Of Living.

The Wise Know That Foolish Legislation Is A Rope Of Sand, Which Perishes In The Twisting.

A Man In Pursuit Of Greatness Feels No Little Wants.

Best Masters For The Young Writer And Speaker Are The Fault- Finding Brothers And Sisters At Home Who Will Not Spare Him, But Willpick And Cavil, And Tell The Odious Truth.

We Judge Others By Their Actions But We Judge Ourselves By Our Intensions.

The Intellect Searches Out The Absolute Order Of Things As They Stand In The Mind Of God, And Without The Colors Of Affection. The Intellectual And The Active Powers Seem To Succeed Each Other, And The Exclusive Activity Of The One Generates The Exclusive Activity Of The Other. There Is Something Unfriendly In Each To The Other, But They Are Like The Alternate Periods Of Feeding And Working In Animals; Each Prepares And Will Be Followed By The Other.

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

Heaven Sometimes Hedges A Rare Character About With Ungainliness And Odium, As The Burr That Protects The Fruit.

When We Have Broken Our God Of Tradition, And Ceased From Our God Of Rhetoric, Then May God Fire The Heart With His Presence.

For The World Was Built In Order Around The Atoms March In Tune; Rhyme The Pipe, And Time The Warder, The Sun Obeys Them, And The Moon.

In Vain Produced, All Rays Return; Evil Will Bless, And Ice Will Burn.

Keep Cool: It Will Be All One A Hundred Years Hence.

Sleep Is Not, Death Is Not; Who Seem To Die Live. House You Were Born In, Friends Of Your Spring-time, Old Man And Young Maid, Day's Toil And It's Guerdon, They Are All Vanishing, Fleeing To Fables, Cannot Be Moored

Go Cherish Your Soul; Express Companions; Set Your Habits To A Life Of Solitude; Then Will The Faculties Rise Fair And Full Within.

We Must Not Inquire Too Curiously Into The Absolute Value Of Literature. Enough That It Amuses And Exercises Us. At Least It Leaves Us Where We Were. It Names Things, But Does Not Add Things.

Every Vice Is Only An Exaggeration Of A Necessary And Virtuous Function.

Exaggeration Is

Every Man Has His Own Courage, And Is Betrayed Because He Seeks In Himself The Courage Of Other Persons.

The True Test Of Civilization Is Not The Census, Nor The Size Of Cities, Nor The Crops - No, But The Kind Of Man The Country Turns Out.

Every Man Is A Channel Through Which Heaven Floweth.

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

But Wise Men Pierce This Rotten Diction And Fasten Words Again To Visible Things; So That Picturesque Language Is At Once A Commanding Certificate That He Who Employs It, Is A Man In Alliance With Truth And God.

Cupid Is A Casuist, A Mystic, And A Cabalist,-- Can Your Lurking Thought Surprise, And Interpret Your Device, . . . . All Things Wait For And Divine Him,-- How Shall I Dare To Malign Him?

There Is A Property In The Horizon Which No Man Has, But He Whose Eyes Can Integrate All The Parts,--that Is, The Poet.

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

Give Me Health And A Day, And I Will Make The Pomp Of Emperors Ridiculous.

If We Consider What Happens In Conversation, In Reveries, In Remorse, In Times Of Passion, In Surprises, In The Instructions Of Dreams, Wherein Often We See Ourselves In Masquerade,--the Droll Disguises Only Magnifying And Enhancing A Real Element, And Forcing It On Our Distinct Notice,--we Shall Catch Many Hints That Will Broaden And Lighten Into Knowledge Of The Secret Of Nature.

What Is Civilization? I Answer, The Power Of Good Women.

We Are Shut Up In Schools And College Recitation Rooms For Ten Or Fifteen Years, And Come Out At Last With A Bellyful Of Words And Do Not Know A Thing.

The Question Is Whether [suicide] Is The Way Out, Or The Way In.

Painting Seems To Be To The Eye What Dancing Is To The Limbs. When That Has Educated The Frame To Self-possession, To Nimbleness,to Grace, The Steps Of The Dancing-master Are Better Forgotten; So Painting Teaches Me The Splendor Of Color And The Expression Of Form, And As I See Many Pictures And Higher Genius In The Art, I See The Boundless Opulence Of The Pencil, The Indifferency In Which The Artist Stands Free To Choose Out Of The Possible Forms.

There Is A Third Silent Party To All Our Bargains. The Nature And Soul Of Things Takes On Itself The Guaranty Of The Fulfillment Of Every Contract, So That Honest Service Cannot Come To Loss. If You Serve An Ungrateful Master, Serve Him The More. Put God In Your Debt. Every Stroke Shall Be Repaid. The Longer The Payment Is Withholden, The Better For You; For Compound Interest On Compound Interest Is The Rate And Usage Of This Exchequer.

There Is No Den In The Wide World To Hide A Rogue.

I Will Not Hide My Tastes Or Aversions. I Will So Trust That What Is Deep Is Holy, That I Will Do Strongly Before The Sun And Moon Whatever Only Rejoices Me, And The Heart Appoints

We Are Immersed In Beauty, But Our Eyes Have No Clear Vision.

One Can Never Truly Savor Success Until First Tasting Adversity.

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

Time Dissipates To Shining Ether The Solid Angularity Of Facts.

It Is Said That The World Is In A State Of Bankruptcy, That The World Owes The World More Than The World Can Pay.

If You Would Serve Your Brother It Is Fit For You To Serve Him, Do Not Take Back Your Words When You Find That Prudent People Do Not Commend You. Be True To Your Own Act, And Congratulate Yourself If You Have Done Something Strange And Extravagant And Broken The Monotony Of A Decorous Age.

Let Us Advance On Chaos And The Dark

All Vigor Is Contagious.

There Is Nothing In History To Parallel The Influence Of Jesus Christ.

Oxford Is A Little Aristocracy In Itself, Numerous And Dignified Enough To Rank With Other Estates In The Realm; And Where Fame And Secular Promotion Are To Be Had For Study, And In A Direction Which Has The Unanimous Respect Of All Cultivated Nations.

"do Not Call Yourself An "artist-photographer" And Make "artist-painters" And "artist-sculptors" Laugh; Call Yourself A Photographer And Wait For Artists To Call You Brother."

Envy Is The Tax Which All Distinction Must Pay.

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

Earth Endures; Stars Abide.

The Poor Are Only They Who Feel Poor.

Every Great And Commanding Movement In The Annals Of The World Is Due To The Triumph Of Enthusiasm. Nothing Great Was Ever Achieved Without It

Enthusiasm For Life

The Sanity Of Society Is A Balance Of A Thousand Insanity's.

The Land Is The Appointed Remedy For Whatever Is False And Fantastic In Our Culture...food For Our Mind, As Well As Our Body.

Headwinds Are Sore Vexations And The More Passengers The Sorer.

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.

The Only Right Is What Is After My Constitution; The Only Wrong Is What Is Against It.

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

Every Sentence Spoken By Napoleon, And Every Line Of His Writing, Deserves Reading, As It Is The Sense Of France.

There Is Never A Beginning, There Is Never An End, To The Inexplicable Continuity Of This Web Of God, But Always Circular Power Returning Into Itself.

It Is The Privilege Of Any Human Work Which Is Well Done To Invest The Doer With A Certain Haughtiness. He Can Well Afford Not To Conciliate, Whose Faithful Work Will Answer For Him.

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?

The Death Of A Dear Friend, Wife, Brother, Lover, Which Seemed Nothing But Privation, Somewhat Later Assumes The Aspect Of A Guide Or Genius; For It Commonly Operates Revolutions In Our Way Of Life, Terminates An Epoch Of Infancy Or Of Youth Which Was Waiting To Be Closed, Breaks Up A Wonted Occupation, Or A Household, Or Style Of Living, And Allows The Formation Of New Ones More Friendly To The Growth Of Character.

Life Is Not So Short But That There Is Always Time Enough For Courtesy.

Here Is The World, Sound As A Nut, Perfect, Not The Smallest Piece Of Chaos Left, Never A Stitch Nor An End, Not A Mark Of Haste, Or Botching, Or Second Thought; But The Theory Of The World Is A Thing Of Shreds And Patches.

We Are Such Lovers Of Self-reliance, That We Excuse In A Man Many Sins, If He Will Show Us A Complete Satisfaction In His Position, Which Asks No Leave To Be, Of Mine, Or Any Man's Good Opinion.

A Man's Wife Has More Power Over Him Than The State Has.

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.

A Vivid Thought Brings The Power To Paint It; And In Proportion To The Depth Of Its Source Is The Force Of Its Projection.

Our Country, Customs, Laws, Our Ambitions, And Our Notions Of Fit And Fair-all These We Never Made; We Found Them Ready-made; We But Quote From Them. What Would Remain To Me If This Art Of Appropriation Were Derogatory To Genius? Every One Of My Writings Has Been Furnished To Me By A Thousand Different Persons, A Thousand Things; Wise And Foolish Have Brought Me, Without Suspecting It, The Offering Of Their Thoughts, Faculties, And Experience. My Work Is An Aggregation Of Beings Taken From The Whole Of Nature. It Bears The Name Of Goethe.

In The Highest Civilization The Book Is Still The Highest Delight.

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

I Like The Church, I Like A Cowl, I Love A Prophet Of The Soul; And On My Heart Monastic Aisles Fall Like Sweet Strains Or Pensive Smiles; Yet Not For All His Faith Can See, Would I That Cowled Churchman Be.

God Hides Things By Putting Them Near Us.

How Much Of Human Life Is Lost In Waiting.

Every Wall Is A Door.

The Vanishing, Volatile Froth Of The Present Which Any Shadow Will Alter, Any Thought Blow Away, Any Event Annihilate, Is Every Moment Converted Into The Adamantine.

We Live Ruins Amid Ruins.

Passion, Though A Bad Regulator, Is A Powerful Spring. Any Absorbing Passion Has The Effect To Deliver From The Little Coils And Cares Of Every Day: 'tis The Heat Which Sets Our Human Atoms Spinning, Overcomes The Friction Of Crossing Thresholds, And First Addresses In Society, And Gives Us A Good Start And Speed, Easy To Continue, When Once It Is Begun.

Murder In The Murderer Is No Such Ruinous Thought As Poets And Romancers Will Have It; It Does Not Unsettle Him, Or Fright Him From His Ordinary Notice Of Trifles; It Is An Act Quite Easy To Be Contemplated.

And In Cases Where Profound Conviction Has Been Wrought, The Eloquent Man Is He Who Is No Beautiful Speaker, But Who Is Inwardly Drunk With A Certain Belief. It Agitates And Tears Him, And Perhaps Almost Bereaves Him Of The Power Of Articulation.

A Man In Debt Is So Far A Slave.

We Learn Geology The Morning After The Earthquake.

The Conservative Assumes Sickness As A Necessity, And His Social Frame Is A Hospital, His Total Legislation Is For The Present Distress, A Universe In Slippers And Flannels, With Bib And Papspoon, Swallowing Pills And Herb-tea.

When Duty Whispers Low, Thou Must, The Youth Replies, I Can.

The Human Body Is A Magazine Of Inventions, The Patent Office, Where Are The Models From Which Every Hint Is Taken. All The Tools And Engines On Earth Are Only Extensions Of Its Limbs And Senses.

There Is A Persuasion In The Soul Of Man That He Is Here For Cause, That He Was Put Down In This Place By The Creator To Do The Work For Which He Inspires Him, That Thus He Is An Overmatch For All Antagonists That Could Combine Against Him.

Two Touch The String, The Harp Is Dumb.

Though We Travel The World Over To Find The Beautiful, We Must Carry It With Us Or We Find It Not.

The Sky Is The Ultimate Art Gallery Just Above Us.

The Charming Landscape Which I Saw This Morning Is Indubitably Made Up Of Some Twenty Or Thirty Farms. Miller Owns This Field, Locke That, And Manning The Woodland Beyond. But None Of Them Owns The Landscape. There Is Property In The Horizon Which No Man Has But He Whose Eye Can Integrate All Parts, That Is, The Poet. This Is The Best Part Of These Men's Farms, Yet To This Their Warranty-deeds Give No Title.

You Must Elect Your Work; You Shall Take What Your Brains Can, And Drop All The Rest. Only So Can That Amount Of Vital Force Accumulate Which Can Make The Step From Knowing To Doing. No Matter How Much Faculty Of Idle Seeing A Man Has, The Step From Knowing To Doing Is Rarely Taken. It Is A Step Out Of A Chalk Circle Of Imbecility Into Fruitfulness.

A Fact Is The End Or Last Issue Of Spirit. The Visible Creation Is The Terminus Or The Circumference Of The Invisible World.

Tis The Privilege Of Art Thus To Play Its Cheerful Part, Man On Earth To Acclimate And Bend The Exile To His Fate.

Power And Speed Be Hands And Feet.

In Youth, We Clothe Ourselves With Rainbows, And Go As Brave As The Zodiac.

What Matters Most Is Not What Is Behind Us Or Before Us, But What Is Within Us.

I Do Not See How A Barbarous Community And A Civilized Community Can Constitute A State. I Think We Must Get Rid Of Slavery Or We Must Get Rid Of Freedom.

The Charm Of The Best Courages Is That They Are Inventions, Inspirations, Flashes Of Genius.

When We See A Special Reformer We Feel Like Asking Him, What Right Have You, Sir, To Your Own Virtue? Is Virtue Piecemeal?

There Is No Beautifier Of Complexion, Or Form, Or Behavior, Like The Wish To Scatter Joy And Not Pain Around Us. 'tis Good To Give A Stranger A Meal, Or A Night's Lodging. 'tis Better To Be Hospitable To His Good Meaning And Thought, And Give Courage To A Companion. We Must Be As Courteous To A Man As We Are To A Picture, Which We Are Willing To Give The Advantage Of A Good Light.

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

Each Mind Has Its Own Method.

Nature Abhors The Old.

The Mark Of A Man Of The World Is Absence Of Pretension.

In The Woods Too, A Man Casts Off His Years, As The Snake His Slough, And At What Period Soever Of Life, Is Always A Child. In The Woods, Is Perpetual Youth.

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

Life Is A Search After Power.

The Invariable Mark Of Wisdom Is To See The Miraculous In The Common.

Courage Of The Soldier Awakes The Courage Of Woman.

God Said, I Am Tired Of Kings, I Suffer Them No More; Up To My Ear This Morning Brings The Outrage Of The Poor.

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

Every Man Passes His Life In The Search After Friendship.

There Are Men Too Superior To Be Seen Except By A Few, As There Are Notes Too High For The Scale Of Most Ears.

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.

The Quality Of The Imagination Is To Flow And Not To Freeze.

The City Is Always Recruited From The Country. The Men In Cities Who Are The Centres Of Energy, The Driving-wheels Of Trade, Politics Or Practical Arts, And The Women Of Beauty And Genius, Are The Children Or Grandchildren Of Farmers, And Are Spending The Energies Which Their Fathers' Hardy, Silent Life Accumulated In Frosty Furrows In Poverty, Necessity And Darkness.

It Is With A Good Book As It Is With Good Company.

The Religions Of The World Are The Ejaculations Of A Few Imaginative Men.

We Live Amid Surfaces, And The True Art Of Life Is To Skate Well On Them

We Are Made Aware That Magnitude Of Material Things Is Relative, And All Objects Shrink And Expand To Serve The Passion Of The Poet. Thus, In His Sonnets, The Lays Of Birds, The Scents And Dyes Of Flowers, He Finds To Be The Shadow Of His Beloved; Time, Which Keeps Her From Him, Is His Chest; The Suspicion She Has Awakened, Is Her Ornament

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

We Pass For What We Are.

But There Is No End To The Praise Of Books, To The Value Of The Library. Who Shall Estimate Their Influence On Our Population Where All The Millions Read And Write ? It Is The Joy Of Nations That Man Can Communicate All His Thoughts, Discoveries And Virtues To Records That May Last For Centuries.

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

Manners Require Time, And Nothing Is More Vulgar Than Haste.

The Sun Illuminates Only The Eye Of The Man, But Shines Into The Eye And The Heart Of The Child.

Wouldst Thou Shut Up The Avenues Of Ill, Pay Every Debt As If God Wrote The Bill.

We Learn Geology The Morning After The Earthquake, On Ghastly Diagrams Of Cloven Mountains, Upheaved Plains, And The Dry Bed Of The Sea.

Gold And Iron Are Good To Buy Iron And Gold.

Difficulties Exist To Be Surmounted.

The Religion That Is Afraid Of Science Dishonors God And Commits Suicide. Every Influx Of Atheism, Of Skepticism, Is Thus Made Useful As A Mercury Pill Assaulting And Removing A Diseased Religion, And Making Way For Truth.

Another Sort Of False Prayers Are Our Regrets. Discontent Is The Way Of Self-reliance: It Is Infirmity Of Will. Regret Calamities, If You Can Thereby Help The Sufferer; If Not, Attend Your Own Work, And Already The Evil Begins To Be Repaired.

The Laws Of Each Are Convertible Into The Laws Of Any Other.

A Skilful Man Reads His Dreams For His Selfknowledge; Yet Not The Details, But The Quality.

There Is In Nature A Parallel Unity Which Corresponds To The Unity In The Mind And Makes It Available. This Methodizing Mind Meets No Resistance In Its Attempts. The Scattered Blocks, With Which It Strives To Form A Symmetrical Structure, Fit. This Design Following After Finds With Joy That Like Design Went Before. Not Only Man Puts Things In A Row, But Things Belong In A Row.

It Is A Tie Between Men To Have Read The Same Book.

When Summer Opens, I See How Fast It Matures, And Fear It Will Be Short; But After The Heats Of July And August, I Am Reconciled, Like One Who Has Had His Swing, To The Cool Of Autumn.

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.

The Highest Revelation Is That God Is In Every Man.

The Longer We Live The More We Must Endure The Elementary Existence Of Men And Women; And Every Brave Heart Must Treat Society Asa Child, And Never Allow It To Dictate.

Nature Avenges Herself Speedily On The Hard Pedantry That Would Chain Her Waves. She Is No Literalist. Every Thing Must Be Taken Genially, And We Must Be At The Top Of Our Condition, To Understand Any Thing Rightly.

Insist Upon Yourself. Be Original.

Funny Basketball

One More Royal Trait Properly Belongs To The Poet. I Mean His Cheerfulness, Without Which No Man Can Be A Poet,--for Beauty Is His Aim. He Loves Virtue, Not For Its Obligation, But For Its Grace; He Delights In The World, In Man, In Woman, For The Lovely Light That Sparkles From Them. Beauty, The Spirit Of Joy And Hilarity, He Sheds Over The Universe.

The Soul Is The Perceiver And Revealer Of Truth. We Know Truth When We See It, Let Skeptic And Scoffer Say What They Choose. Foolish People Ask You, When You Have Spoken What They Do Not Wish To Hear, 'how Do You Know It Is Truth, And Not An Error Of Your Own?' We Know Truth When We See It, From Opinion, As We Know When We Are Awake That We Are Awake.

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

When I Behold A Rich Landscape, It Is Less To My Purpose To Recite Correctly The Order And Superposition Of The Strata, Than To Know Why All Thought Of Multitude Is Lost In A Tranquil Sense Of Unity.

Each Moment Of The Year Has Its Own Beauty.

Do The Thing And You Will Have The Power. But They That Do Not The Thing, Had Not The Power.

Men Are Conservatives When They Are Least Vigorous, Or When They Are Most Luxurious. They Are Conservatives After Dinner, Or Before Taking Their Rest; When They Are Sick Or Aged. In The Morning, Or When Their Intellect Or Their Conscience Has Been Aroused, When They Hear Music, Or When They Read Poetry, They Are Radicals.

Though We Travel The World Over To Find The Beautiful, We Must Carry It With Us, Or We Find It Not. The Best Of Beauty Is A Finer Charm Than Skill In Surfaces, In Outlines, Or Rules Of Art Can Ever Teach, Namely, A Radiation From The Work Of Art Of Human Character, — A Wonderful Expression Through Stone, Or Canvas, Or Musical Sound, Of The Deepest And Simplest Attributes Of Our Nature, And Therefore Most Intelligible At Last To Those Souls Which Have These Attributes.

Happiness Is A Perfume You Cannot Pour On Others Without Getting Some On Yourself.

Do That Which You Fear To Do, And The Fear Will Die.

We Sometimes Meet An Original Gentleman, Who, If Manners Had Not Existed, Would Have Invented Them.

Thus Grows Up Fashion, An Equivocal Semblance, The Most Puissant, The Most Fantastic And Frivolous, The Most Feared And Followed, And Which Morals And Violence Assault In Vain.

No Man Can Quite Emancipate Himself From His Age And Country, Or Produce A Model In Which The Education, The Religion, The Politics, Usages, And Arts, Of His Times Shall Have No Share.

Art, In The Artist, Is Proportion, Or, A Habitual Respect To The Whole By An Eye Loving Beauty In Details. And The Wonder And Charm Of It Is The Sanity In Insanity Which It Denotes.

As Every Man Is Hunted By His Own Daemon, Vexed By His Own Disease, This Checks All His Activity.

Beware Of Jokes From Which We Go Away Hollow And Ashamed.

What I Must Do Is All That Concerns Me, Not What People Think. This Rule,equally Arduous In Actual And Intellectual Life, May Serve For The Whole Distinction Between Greatness And Meanness. It Is The Harder, Because You Will Always Find Those Who Think They Know What Is Your Duty Better Than You Know It. It Is Easy In The World To Live After The World's Opinion; It Is Easy In Solitude To Live After Our Own; But The Great Man Is He Who In The Midst Of The Crowd Keeps With Perfect Sweetness The Independence Of Solitude.

Private, Accidental, Confidential Conversation Breeds Thought. Clubs Produce Oftener Words.

Is There A Difference? Yes. We Are In Harmony With Nature, But Never At Peace.

There Is Always A Best Way Of Doing Everything.

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

Language And Power

The Exceptional Life Depends Not On Working Harder, But On Different, Even Opposite, Actions From Habit And The Crowd.

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.

As Many Languages As He Has, As Many Friends, As Many Arts And Trades, So Many Times Is He A Man.

Doing Well Is The Result Of Doing Good. That's What Capitalism Is All About.

When The Act Of Reflection Takes Place In The Mind, When We Look At Ourselves In The Light Of Thought, We Discover That Our Life Is Embosomed In Beauty.

Let Not A Man Guard His Dignity, But Let His Dignity Guard Him.

As Men's Prayers Are A Disease Of The Will, So Are Their Creeds A Disease Of The Intellect.

The Italians Are Fond Of Red Clothes, Peacock Plumes, And Embroidery; And I Remember One Rainy Morning In The City Of Palermo, The Street Was Ablaze With Scarlet Umbrellas.

The Antidote To This Abuse Of Formal Government, Is, The Influence Of Private Character, The Growth Of The Individual.

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

Nature Wishes That Woman Should Attract Man, Yet She Often Cunningly Moulds Into Her Face A Little Sarcasm, Which Seems To Say, 'yes, I Am Willing To Attract, But To Attract A Little Better Kind Of A Man Than Any I Yet Behold

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.

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.

For It Is Only The Finite That Has Wrought And Suffered; The Infinite Lies Stretched In Smiling Repose.

The Angels Are So Enamored Of The Language That Is Spoken In Heaven That They Will Not Distort Their Lips With The Hissing And Unmusical Dialects Of Men, But Speak Their Own, Whether Their Be Any Who Understand It Or Not.

I Learn Immediately From Any Speaker How Much He Has Already Lived, Through The Poverty Or The Splendor Of His Speech. Life Lies Behind Us As The Quarry From Whence We Get Tiles And Copestones For The Masonry Of Today. This Is The Way To Learn Grammar. Colleges And Books Only Copy The Language Which The Field And The Work-yard Made.

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.

All Life Is An Experiment.

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.

The Worst Feature Of This Double Consciousness Is, That The Two Lives, Of The Understanding And Of The Soul, Which We Lead, Reallyshow Very Little Relation To Each Other; Never Meet And Measure Each Other: One Prevails Now, All Buzz And Din; And The Other Prevails Then, All Infinitude And Paradise; And, With The Progress Of Life, The Two Discover No Greater Disposition To Reconcile Themselves.

As Much Wisdom May Be Expended On A Private Economy As On An Empire, And As Much Wisdom May Be Drawn From It.

Nations Have Lost Their Old Omnipotence; The Patriotic Tiedoes Not Hold. Nations Are Getting Obsolete, We Go And Live Where We Will.

What I Must Do Is All That Concerns Me, Not What The People Think. This Rule, Equally Arduous In Actual And In Intellectual Life, May Serve For The Whole Distinction Between Greatness And Meanness.

When We Are Exalted By Ideas, We Do Not Owe This To Plato, But To The Idea, To Which Also Plato Was Debtor.

The Consciousness In Each Man Is A Sliding Scale, Which Identifies Him Now With The First Cause, And Now With The Flesh Of His Body; Life Above Life, In Infinite Degrees.

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

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Richard Matheson

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