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In Different Hours, A Man Represents Each Of Several Of His Ancestors, As If There Were Seven Or Eight Of Us Rolled Up In Each Man's Skin, - Seven Or Eight Ancestors At Least, And They Constitute The Variety Of Notes For That New Piece Of Music Which His Life Is.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In Different Hours, A

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In Different Hours, A Man Represents Each Of Several Of His Ancestors, As If There Were Seven Or Eight Of Us Rolled Up In Each Man's Skin, - Seven Or Eight Ancestors At Least, And They Constitute The Variety Of Notes For That New Piece Of Music Which His Life Is.

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More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

If The East Loves Infinity, The West Delights In Boundaries.

The Have A Good Friend Is One Of The Greatest Delights Of Life.

The Sower May Mistake And Sow His Peas Crookedly; The Peas Make No Mistake, But Come Up And Show His Line.

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

By Virtue Of This Science The Poet Is The Namer, Or Language-maker, Naming Things Sometimes After Their Appearance, Sometimes After Their Essence, And Giving To Every One Its Own Name And Not Another's, Thereby Rejoicing The Intellect, Which Delights In Detachment Or Boundary.

Stay At Home In Your Mind. Don't Recite Other People's Opinions.

The Magnanimous Know Very Well That They Who Give Time, Or Money, Or Shelter, To The Stranger--so It Be Done For Love, And Not Forostentation--do, As It Were, Put God Under Obligation To Them, So Perfect Are The Compensations Of The Universe.

Throw A Stone Into The Stream And The Ripples That Propagate Themselves Are The Beautiful Type Of All Influence.

Every Man Is Not So Much A Workman In The World As He Is A Suggestion Of That He Should Be. Men Walk As Prophecies Of The Next Age.

The Child Realizes To Every Man His Own Earliest Remembrance, And So Supplies A Defect In Our Education, Or Enables Us To Live Over The Unconscious History With A Sympathy So Tender As To Be Almost Personal Experience.

It Is Easy To Carp At Colleges, And The College, If He Will Wait For It, Will Have Its Own Turn. Genius Exists There Also, But Will Not Answer A Call Of A Committee Of The House Of Commons. It Is Rare, Precious, Eccentric, And Darkling.

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.

Science Always Goes Abreast With The Just Elevation Of The Man, Keeping Step With Religion And Metaphysics; Or, The State Of Science Is An Index Of Our Self-knowledge.

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

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.

Every Heroic Act Measures Itself By Its Contempt Of Some External Good. But It Finds Its Own Success At Last, And Then The Prudent Also Extol.

All History Is But The Lengthened Shadow Of A Great Man.

In The Morning A Man Walks With His Whole Body; In The Evening, Only With His Legs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals And Miscellaneous Notebooks Greek Architecture Is The Perfect Flowering Of Geometry.

You Cannot Sincerely Try To Help Another Without Helping Yourself

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.

All Goes To Show That The Soul In Man Is Not An Organ, But Animates And Exercises All The Organs; Is Not A Function, Like The Power Of Memory, Of Calculation, Of Comparison, But Uses These As Hands And Feet; Is Not A Faculty, But A Light, Is Not The Intellect Or The Will, But The Master Of The Intellect And The Will; Is The Background Of Our Being, In Which They Lie,--an Immensity Not Possessed And That Cannot Be Possessed.

I Unsettle All Things.

That For Which Paul Lived And Died So Gloriously; That For Which Jesus Gave Himself To Be Crucified; The End That Animated The Thousand Martyrs And Heroes Who Have Followed His Steps, Was To Redeem Us From A Formal Religion, And Teach Us To Seek Our Well-being In The Formation Of The Soul.

The Light By Which We See In This World Comes Out From The Soul Of The Observer. Wherever Any Noble Sentiment Dwelt, It Made The Faces And Houses Around To Shine. Nay, The Powers Of This Busy Brain Are Miraculous And Illimitable.

Money, Which Represents The Prose Of Life, And Which Is Hardly Spoken Of In Parlors Without An Apology, Is, In Its Effects And Laws, As Beautiful As Roses.

All High Beauty Has A Moral Element In It.

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

As The Sandwich Islander Believes That The Strength And Valor Of The Enemy He Kills Passes Into Himself, So We Gain The Strength Of The Temptation We Resist.

We Will Walk On Our Own Feet; We Will Work With Our Own Hands; We Will Speak Our Own Minds... A Nation Of Men Will For The First Time Exist, Because Each Believes Himself Inspired By The Divine Soul Which Also Inspires All Men.

Souls Are Not Saved In Bundles.

The God Of Victory Is Said To Be One-handed, But Peace Gives Victory To Both Sides.

The Secret Of Success In Society Is A Certain Heartiness And Sympathy. A Man Who Is Not Happy In Company, Cannot Find Any Word In His Memory That Will Fit The Occasion; All His Information Is A Little Impertinent. A Man Who Is Happy There, Finds In Every Turn Of The Conversation Occasions For The Introduction Of What He Has To Say. The Favorites Of Society Are Able Men, And Of More Spirit Than Wit, Who Have No Uncomfortable Egotism, But Who Exactly Fill The Hour And The Company, Contended And Contenting.

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.

The Highest Beauty Should Be Plain Set.

The First Farmer Was The First Man, And All Historic Nobility Rests On Possession And Use Of Land.

Undoubtedly We Have No Questions To Ask Which Are Unanswerable. We Must Trust The Perfection Of The Creation So Far, As To Believe That Whatever Curiosity The Order Of Things Has Awakened In Our Minds, The Order Of Things Can Satisfy. Every Man's Condition Is A Solution In Hieroglyphic To Those Inquiries He Would Put. He Acts It As Life, Before He Apprehends It As Truth.

Give All To Love: Obey Thy Heart; Friends, Kindred, Days, Estate, Good Fame, Plans, Credit, And The Muse,- Nothing Refuse.

Go Out Of The House To See The Moon, And 't Is Mere Tinsel; It Will Not Please As When Its Light Shines Upon Your Necessary Journey. The Beauty That Shimmers In The Yellow Afternoons Of October, Who Could Ever Clutch It? Go Forth To Find It, And It Is Gone: 't Is Only A Mirage As You Look From The Windows Of Diligence.

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

The Reason Of Idleness And Of Crime Is The Deferring Of Our Hopes.

I Cannot Find Language Of Sufficient Energy To Convey My Sense Of The Sacredness Of Private Integrity. All Men, All Things, The State, The Church, Yea The Friends Of The Heart Are Phantasms And Unreal Beside The Sanctuary Of The Heart. With So Much Awe, With So Much Fear, Let It Be Respected.

A Man Cannot Free Himself By Any Self-denying Ordinances, Neither By Water Nor Potatoes, Nor By Violent Possibilities, By Refusing To Swear, Refusing To Pay Taxes, By Going To Jail, Or By Taking Another Man's Crops Or Squatting On His Land. By None Of These Ways Can He Free Himself; No, Nor By Paying His Debts With Money; Only By Obedience To His Own Genius.

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

Great Is Paint; Nay, God Is The Painter; And We Rightly Accuse The Critic Who Destroys Too Many Illusions. Society Does Not Love Its Unmaskers.

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.

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.

Ennui Shortens Life, And Bereaves The Day Of Its Light.

Tart, Cathartic Virtue.

Nothing Is Dead: Men Feign Themselves Dead, And Endure Mock Funerals And Mournful Obituaries, And There They Stand Looking Out Ofthe Window, Sound And Well, In Some New And Strange Disguise.

Virtue Alone Is Sweet Society, It Keeps The Key To All Heroic Hearts, And Opens You A Welcome In Them All.

Nothing Can Be More Delicate Without Being Fantastical, Nothing More Firm And Based In Nature And Sentiment, Than The Courtship And Mutual Carriage Of The Sexes.

It Seems To Be A Rule Of Wisdom Never To Rely On Your Memory Alone, Scarcely Even In Acts Of Pure Memory, But To Bring The Past For Judgment Into The Thousand-eyed Present, And Live Ever In A New Day.

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

Live Well, Learn Plenty, Laugh Often, Love Much.

To Finish The Moment, To Find The Journey's End In Every Step Of The Road, To Live The Greatest Number Of Good Hours, Is Wisdom. It Is Not The Part Of Men, But Of Fanatics, Or Of Mathematicians, If You Will, To Say, That, The Shortness Of Life Considered, It Is Not Worth Caring Whether For So Short A Duration We Were Sprawling In Want, Or Sitting High. Since Our Office Is With Moments, Let Us Husband Them.

All Power Is Of One Kind, A Sharing Of The Nature Of The World. The Mind That Is Parallel With The Laws Of Nature Will Be In The Current Of Events, And Strong With Their Strength.

The Poise Of A Plant, The Bended Tree Recovering Itself From The Strong Wind, The Vital Resources Of Every Vegetable And Animal, Are Also Demonstrations Of The Self-sufficing, And Therefore Self-relying Soul. All History From Its Highest To Its Trivial Passages Is The Various Record Of This Power.

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

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.

When Fear Enters The Heart Of A Man At Hearing The Names Of Candidates And The Reading Of Laws That Are Proposed, Then Is The State Safe, But When These Things Are Heard Without Regard, As Above Or Below Us, Then Is The Commonwealth Sick Or Dead.

The Soul Is Not Born; It Does Not Die; It Was Not Produced From Anyone Unborn, Eternal, It Is Not Slain, Though The Body Is Slain.

Yet Things Are Knowable! They Are Knowable, Because, Being From One, Things Correspond. There Is A Scale: And The Correspondence Of Heaven To Earth, Of Matter To Mind, Of The Part To The Whole, Is Our Guide. As There Is A Science Of Stars, Called Astronomy; And Science Of Quantities, Called Mathematics; A Science Of Qualities, Called Chemistry; So There Is A Science Of Sciences,--i Call It Dialectic,--which Is The Intellect Discriminating The False And The True.

To Wade In Marshes And Sea Margins Is The Destiny Of Certain Bird, And They Are So Accurately Made For This That They Are Imprisoned In Those Places. Each Animal Out Of Its Habitat Would Starve. To The Physician, Each Man, Each Woman, Is An Amplification Of One Organ. A Soldier, A Locksmith, A Bank-clerk, And A Dancer Could Not Exchange Functions. And Thus We Are Victims Of Adaptation.

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

Every True Man Is A Cause, A Country, And An Age; Requires Infinite Spaces And Numbers And Time Fully To Accomplish His Design;--and Posterity Seem To Follow His Steps As A Train Of Clients.

Nature Is No Sentimentalist, - Does Not Cosset Or Pamper Us. We Must See That The World Is Rough And Surly, And Will Not Mind Drowning A Man Or A Woman; But Swallows Your Ship Like A Grain Of Dust. The Cold, Inconsiderate Of Persons, Tingles Your Blood, Benumbs Your Feet, Freezes A Man Like An Apple. The Diseases, The Elements, Fortune, Gravity, Lightning, Respect No Persons.

For No Man Can Write Anything Who Does Not Think That What He Writes Is, For The Time, The History Of The World.

Contemporary American Psychiatrist It Is A Happy Talent To Know How To Play.

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.

Poetry Makes Its Own Pertinence, And A Single Stanza Outweighs A Book Of Prose.

It Is One Soul Which Animates All Men.

The Remedy For All Blunders, The Cure Of Blindness, The Cure Of Crime, Is Love.

Peace Cannot Be Achieved Through Violence, It Can Only Be Attained Through Understanding.

Talent May Frolic And Juggle; Genius Realizes And Adds.

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.

The Man Who Renounces Himself, Comes To Himself.

The Poem Is A Confession Of Faith.

A Man Comes To Measure His Greatness By The Regrets, Envies And Hatreds Of His Competitors.

It Must Be That When God Speaketh, He Should Communicate, Not One Thing, But All Things; Should Fill The World With His Voice; Should Scatter Forth Light, Nature, Time, Souls, From The Centre Of The Present Thought; And New Date And New Create The Whole.whenever A Mind Is Simple And Receives A Divine Wisdom, Old Things Pass Away, - Means, Teachers, Texts, Temples Fall; It Lives Now, And Absorbs Past And Future Into The Present Hour. All Things Are Made Sacred By Relation To It,-one As Much As Another. All Things Are Disolved To Ther Center By Thier Cause.

We Teach Boys To Be Such Men As We Are. We Do Not Teach Them To Aspire To Be All They Can. We Do Not Give Them A Training As If Webelieved In Their Noble Nature. We Scarce Educate Their Bodies. We Do Not Train The Eye And The Hand. We Exercise Their Understandings To The Apprehension And Comparison Of Some Facts, To A Skill In Numbers, In Words; We Aim To Make Accountants, Attorneys, Engineers; But Not To Make Able, Earnest, Great- Hearted Men.

People Wish To Be Settled; Only As Far As They Are Unsettled Is There Any Hope For Them.

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

Poetry Teaches The Enormous Force Of A Few Words, And, In Proportion To The Inspiration, Checks Loquacity.

Where There Is No Vision A People Perish.

Speak Your Latent Conviction. . . Else Tomorrow A Stranger Will Say With Masterly Good Sense Precisely What We Have Thought And Felt All The Time, And We Shall Be Forced To Take With Shame Our Own Opinion From Another.

It Seems As If The Day Was Not Wholly Profane In Which We Have Given Heed To Some Natural Object.

A Man Is A Hero, Not Because He Is Braver Than Anyone Else, But Because He Is Brave For 10 Minutes Longer.

The Happiest Man Is He Who Learns From Nature The Lesson Of Worship

A System-grinder Hates The Truth.

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.

The Secret Of Fortune Is Joy In Our Hands.

Rude Poets Of The Tavern Hearth, Squandering Your Unquoted Mirth, Which Keeps The Ground, And Never Soars, While Jake Retorts, And Reuben Roars; Tough And Screaming, As Birch-bark, Goes Like Bullet To Its Mark; While The Solid Curse And Jeer Never Balk The Waiting Ear.

The Stars Awaken A Certain Reverence, Because Though Always Present, They Are Inaccessible.

It Is Doubtless A Vice To Turn One's Eyes Inward Too Much, But I Am My Own Comedy And Tragedy.

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

We Legislate Against Forestalling And Monopoly; We Would Have A Common Granary For The Poor; But The Selfishness Which Hoards Thecorn For High Prices, Is The Preventative Of Famine; And The Law Of Self-preservation Is Surer Policy Than Any Legislation Can Be.

It Is Impossible For A Man To Be Cheated By Anyone But Himself.

Evermore In The World Is This Marvelous Balance Of Beauty And Disgust, Magnificence And Rats.

We See God Face To Face Every Hour, And Know The Savor Of Nature.

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

Of The Shaker Society, It Was Formerly A Sort Of Proverb In The Country, That They Always Sent The Devil To Market.

When We Quarrel, How We Wish We Had Been Blameless.

There Is Nothing Capricious In Nature And The Implanting Of A Desire Indicates That Its Gratification Is In The Constitution Of The Creature That Feel It.

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.

Silence Is A Solvent That Destroys Personality, And Gives Us Leave To Be Great And Universal.

Self Reliance, The Height And Perfection Of Man, Is Reliance On God.

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

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

We Do What We Can, And Then Make A Theory To Prove Our Performance The Best.

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

Nothing Astonishes Men So Much As Common Sense And Plain Dealing.

Concentration Is The Secret Of Strength In Politics, In War, In Trade, In Short In All Management Of Human Affairs.

Focus And Concentration

A Man's Style Is His Mind's Voice. Wooden Minds, Wooden Voices.

Wild Liberty Develops Iron Conscience. Want Of Liberty, By Strengthening Law And Decorum, Stupefies Conscience.

If A Man Carefully Examine His Thoughts He Will Be Surprised To Find How Much He Lives In The Future. His Well-being Is Always Ahead. Such A Creature Is Probably Immortal.

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.

Even In The Mud And Scum Of Things, Something Always, Always Sings.

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

For It Is Not Metres, But A Metre-making Argument That Makes A Poem, - A Thought So Passionate And Alive That Like The Spirit Of A Plant Or An Animal It Has An Architecture Of Its Own, And Adorns Nature With A New Thing.

If Man Has Good Corn, Or Wood, Or Boards, Or Pigs To Sell, Or Can Make Better Chairs Or Knives, Crucibles, Or Church Organs, Than Anybody Else, You Will Find A Broad, Hard-beaten Road To His House, Though It Be In The Woods.

Truth Is Beautiful Within And Without, Forevermore.

As Long As Our Civilization Is Essentially One Of Property, Of Fences, Of Exclusiveness, It Will Be Mocked By Delusions.

In Every Landscape, The Point Of Astonishment Is The Meeting Of The Sky And The Earth, And That Is Seen From The First Hillock Aswell As From The Top Of The Alleghanies. The Stars At Night Stoop Down Over The Brownest, Homeliest Common, With All The Spiritual Magnificence Which They Shed On The Campagna, Or On The Marble Deserts Of Egypt.

Don't Ever Give Up On Something Or Someone That You Can't Go A Full Day Without Thinking About.

Why Should You Renounce Your Right To Traverse The Star-lit Deserts Of Truth, Of The Premature Comforts Of An Acre, House, And Barn? Truth Also Has Its Roof, And Bed, And Board.

I Awoke This Morning With Devout Thanksgiving For My Friends, The Old And The New.

A Just Thinker Will Allow Full Swing To His Scepticism. I Dip My Pen In The Blackest Ink, Because I Am Not Afraid Of Falling Into My Inkpot.... We Are Of Different Opinions At Different Hours, But We Always May Be Said To Be At Heart On The Side Of Truth.

The Simplicity Of The Universe Is Very Different From The Simplicity Of A Machine. The Simplicity Of Nature Is Not That Which May Be Easily Read But Is Inexhaustible. The Last Analysis Can No Wise Be Made.

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

They Have Seen But Half The Universe Who Never Have Been Shown The House Of Pain.

And So The Reliance On Property, Including The Reliance On Governments Which Protect It, Is The Want Of Self-reliance.

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

I See Not Any Road Of Perfect Peace Which A Man Can Walk But After The Counsel Of His Own Bosom.

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 Sage Is The Instructor Of A Hundred Ages.

If I Cannot Brag Of Knowing Something, Then I Brag Of Not Knowing It; At Any Rate, Brag.

As Soon As There Is Life There Is Danger.

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

In Sculpture Did Ever Anybody Call The Apollo A Fancy Piece? Or Say Of The Laocoon How It Might Be Made Different? A Masterpiece Of Art Has In The Mind A Fixed Place In The Chain Of Being, As Much As A Plant Or A Crystal.

Good Judgment Comes From Experience, And A Lot Of That Comes From Bad Judgment. The One Thing In The World, Of Value, Is The Active Soul.

Things Refuse To Be Mismanaged For Long.

Life Is Our Dictionary.

Do You See That Kitten Chasing So Prettily Her Own Tail? If You Could Look With Her Eyes, You Might See Her Surrounded With Hundreds Of Figures Performing Complex Dramas, With Tragic And Comic Issues, Long Conversations, Many Characters, Many Ups And Downs Of Fate.

But Also The Constituency Determines The Vote Of The Representative. He Is Not Only Representative, But Participant. Like Can Onlybe Known By Like. The Reason Why He Knows About Them Is, That He Is Of Them; He Has Just Come Out Of Nature, Or From Being A Part Of The Thing.

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.

The Beautiful Laws Of Time And Space, Once Dislocated By Our Inaptitude, Are Holes And Dens. If The Hive Be Disturbed By Rash And Stupid Hands, Instead Of Honey, It Will Yield Us Bees.

Good Bye, Proud World! I'm Going Home; Thou Art Not My Friend, And I'm Not Thine

There Is No Event Greater In Life Than The Appearance Of New Persons About Our Hearth, Except It Be The Progress Of The Characterwhich Draws Them.

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

History Is The Action And Reaction Of These Two, Nature And Thought.

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.

The Art Of Conversation, Or The Qualification For A Good Companion, Is A Certain Self-control, Which Now Holds The Subject, Now Lets It Go, With A Respect For The Emergencies Of The Moment.

I Read The Other Day Some Verses Written By An Eminent Painter Which Were Original And Not Conventional.

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

The Key To Every Man Is His Thought. Sturdy And Defying Though He Look, He Has A Helm Which He Obeys, Which Is The Idea After Which All His Facts Are Classified. He Can Only Be Reformed By Showing Him A New Idea Which Commands His Own.

I Like Man, But Not Men.

We Postpone Our Literary Work Until We Have More Ripeness And Skill To Write, And We One Day Discover That Our Literary Talent Wasa Youthful Effervescence Which We Have Now Lost.

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

Be An Opener Of Doors

Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds.

When There Is Sympathy, There Needs But One Wise Man In A Company And All Are Wise,--so, A Blockhead Makes A Blockhead Of His Companion. Wonderful Power To Benumb Possesses This Brother.

The Eloquence Of One Stimulates All The Rest, Some Up To The Speaking-point, And All Others To A Degree That Makes Them Good Receivers And Conductors, And They Avenge Themselves For Their Enforced Silence By Increased Loquacity On Their Return.

One Must Be An Inventor To Read Well.

Creative Writers

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

God Had Infinite Time To Give Us.... He Cut It Up Into A Near Succession Of New Mornings, And, With Each, Therefore, A New Idea, New Inventions, And New Applications.

Meek Young Men Grow Up In Colleges And Believe It Is Their Duty To Accept The Views Which Books Have Given, And Grow Up Slaves.

What You Are Shouts At Me So Loudly That I Can't Hear A Word You Say.

The Moment The Doctrine Of The Immortality Is Separately Taught, Man Is Already Fallen. In The Flowing Of Love, In The Adoration Of Humility, There Is No Question Of Continuance. No Inspired Man Ever Asks This Question, Or Condescends To These Evidences. For The Soul Is True To Itself, And The Man In Whom It Is Shed Abroad Cannot Wander From The Present, Which Is Infinite, To A Future Which Would Be Finite.

Whatever You Do, You Need Courage. Whatever Course You Decide Upon, There Is Always Someone To Tell You That You Are Wrong. There Are Always Difficulties Arising That Tempt You To Believe Your Critics Are Right. To Map Out A Course Of Action And Follow It To An End Requires Some Of The Same Courage That A Soldier Needs. Peace Has Its Victories, But It Takes Brave Men And Women To Win Them.

Writing Should Be The Settlement Of Dew On The Leaf.

All Life Is An Experiment. Place Yourself In The Middle Of The Stream Of Power And Wisdom Which Animates All Whom It Floats, And You Are Without Effort Impelled To Truth, To Right And A Perfect Contentment. I Wish To Write Such Rhymes As Shall Not Suggest A Restraint, But Contrariwise The Wildest Freedom. Immortality. I Notice That As Soon As Writers Broach This Question They Begin To Quote. I Hate Quotation. Tell Me What You Know.

The Task Ahead Of Us Is Never As Great As The Power Behind Us.

Men Are Not Philosophers, But Are Rather Very Foolish Children, Who, By Reason Of Their Partiality, See Everything In The Most Absurd Manner, And Are The Victims At All Times Of The Nearest Object. There Is Even No Philosopher Who Is A Philosopher At All Times. Our Experience, Our Perception Is Conditioned By The Need To Acquire In Parts And In Succession, That Is, With Every Truth A Certain Falsehood.

When We Can't Piece Together The Puzzle Of Our Own Lives, Remember The Best View Of A Puzzle Is From Above. Let Him Help Put You Together.

Though I Am Weak, Yet God, When Prayed, Cannot Withhold His Conquering Aid.

This One Fact The World Hates; That The Soul Becomes; For That Forever Degrades The Past, Turns All Riches To Poverty, All Reputation To A Shame, Confounds The Saint With The Rogue, Shoves Jesus And Judas Equally Aside.

I Am Not Much An Advocate For Traveling, And I Observe That Men Run Away To Other Countries Because They Are Not Good In Their Own, And Run Back To Their Own Because They Pass For Nothing In The New Places. For The Most Part, Only The Light Characters Travel. Who Are You That Have No Task To Keep You At Home?

Therefore Is Nature Ever The Ally Of Religion: Lends Her All Her Pomp And Riches To The Religious Sentiment.

All Great Successes Are The Triumph Of Persistence.

Our Best Thoughts Come From Others.

There Is No Better Way To Exercise The Imagination Than The Study Of The Law.

There The Great Planter Plants Of Fruitful Worlds The Grain, And With A Million Spells Enchants The Souls That Walk In Pain.

The Virtue Of Art Lies In Detachment, In Sequestering One Object From The Embarrassing Variety. Until One Thing Comes Out From Theconnection Of Things, There Can Be Enjoyment, Contemplation, But No Thought.

A Good Indignation Brings Out All One's Powers.

The Moral Sense Is Always Supported By The Permanent Interest Of The Parties. Else, I Know Not How, In Our World, Any Good Would Ever Get Done.

He Who Is Not Everyday Conquering Some Fear Has Not Learned The Secret Of Life.

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

But I Cannot Recite, Even Thus Rudely, Laws Of The Intellect, Without Remembering That Lofty And Sequestered Class Of Men Who Have Been Its Prophets And Oracles, The High-priesthood Of The Pure Reason, The Trismegisti, The Expounders Of The Principles Of Thought From Age To Age.

Lose Yourself In Nature And Find Peace

But The Wise Know That Foolish Legislation Is A Rope Of Sand, Which Perishes In The Twisting; That The State Must Follow, And Notlead The Character And Progress Of The Citizen; The Strongest Usurper Is Quickly Got Rid Of; And They Only Who Build On Ideas, Build For Eternity; And That The Form Of Government Which Prevails, Is The Expression Of What Cultivation Exists In The Population Which Permits It.

Democracy Becomes A Government Of Bullies Tempered By Editors.

Democracies Have

A Man Is Like A Bit Of Labrador Spar, Which Has No Luster As You Turn It In Your Hand, Until You Come To A Particular Angle; Then It Shows Deep And Beautiful Colors.

Of All The Ways To Lose A Person, Death Is The Kindest

The Inmost In Due Time Becomes The Outmost.

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

The Gods We Worship Write Their Names On Our Faces; Be Sure Of That. And A Man Will Worship Something ... That Which Dominates Will Determine His Life And Character. Therefore It Behooves Us To Be Careful What We Worship, For What We Are Worshipping We Are Becoming.

We Can Only Be Valued As We Make Ourselves Valuable.

I Have Come To Believe That The Whole World Is An Enigma, A Harmless Enigma That Is Made Terrible By Our Own Mad Attempt To Interpret It As Though It Had An Underlying Truth. 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.

Let Him Go Where He Will, He Can Only Find So Much Beauty Or Worth As He Carries.

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

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Martin Heidegger

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