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In Our Large Cities, The Population Is Godless, Materialized,--no Bond, No Fellow-feeling, No Enthusiasm. These Are Not Men, But Hungers, Thirsts, Fevers, And Appetites Walking. How Is It People Manage To Live On,--so Aimless As They Are? After Their Peppercorn Aims Are Gained, It Seems As If The Lime In Their Bones Alone Held Them Together, And Not Any Worthy Purpose.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In Our Large Cities,

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In Our Large Cities, The Population Is Godless, Materialized,--no Bond, No Fellow-feeling, No Enthusiasm. These Are Not Men, But Hungers, Thirsts, Fevers, And Appetites Walking. How Is It People Manage To Live On,--so Aimless As They Are? After Their Peppercorn Aims Are Gained, It Seems As If The Lime In Their Bones Alone Held Them Together, And Not Any Worthy Purpose.

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If I Quake, What Matters It What I Quake At? Our Proper Vice Takes Form In One Or Another Shape, According To The Sex, Age, Or Temperament Of The Person, And, If We Are Capable Of Fear, Will Readily Find Terrors.

The Hero Sees That The Event Is Ancillary: It Must Follow Him.

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

Tis Good-will Makes Intelligence.

The Heroic Soul Does Not Sell Its Justice And Its Nobleness.

I Have No Expectation That Any Man Will Read History Aright Who Thinks That What Was Done In A Remote Age, By Men Whose Names Have Resounded Far, Has Any Deeper Sense Than What He Is Doing Today.

Let Us Take Our Bloated Nothingness Out Of The Path Of The Divine Circuits.

The Good Husband Finds Method As Efficient In The Packing Of Fire-wood In A Shed, Or In The Harvesting Of Fruits In The Cellar, As In Peninsular Campaigns Or The Files Of The Department Of State.

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Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds.

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Nobody Can Bring You Peace But Yourself.

The Highest Beauty Should Be Plain Set.

When It's Darkest, Men See The Stars.

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She Shows Us Only Surfaces, But She Is Million-fathoms Deep.

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Art Is A Jealous Mistress.

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Do Not Believe That Possibly You Can Escape The Reward Of Your Action.

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.

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The Victories Of Character Are Instant, And Victories For All.

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Whoso Would Be A Man Must Be A Nonconformist.

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When Nature Has Work To Be Done, She Creates A Genius To Do It.

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Goodness That Preaches Undoes Itself.

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Thought Is The Blossom; Language The Bud; Action The Fruit Behind It.

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I Am The Owner Of The Sphere, Of The Seven Stars And The Solar Year, Of Caesar's Hand, And Plato's Brain, Of Lord Christ's Heart, And Shakespeare's Strain.

A Ruddy Drop Of Manly Blood The Surging Sea Outweighs; The World Uncertain Comes And Goes, The Lover Rooted Stays.

Our Life Is An Apprenticeship To The Truth That Around Every Circle Another Can Be Drawn; That There Is No End In Nature, But Every End Is A Beginning, And Under Every Deep A Lower Deep Opens.

My Companion Assumes To Know My Mood And Habit Of Thought, And We Go On From Explanation To Explanation, Until All Is Said That Words Can, And We Leave Matters Just As They Were At First, Because Of That Vicious Assumption.

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

A Man Cannot Utter Two Or Three Sentences Without Disclosing To Intelligent Ears Precisely Where He Stands In Life And Thought, Whether In The Kingdom Of The Senses And The Understanding, Or In That Of Ideas And Imagination, Or In The Realm Of Intuitions And Duty.

The Proof Of A High Education Is The Ability To Speak About Complex Matters As Simply As Possible.

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To Be Yourself In A World That Is Constantly Trying To Make You Something Else Is The Greatest Accomplishment.

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

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

It Is One Of The Beautiful Compensations In This Life That No One Can Sincerely Try To Help Another Without Helping Himself.

To Help The Young Soul, To Add Energy, Inspire Hope, And Blow The Coals Into A Useful Flame; To Redeem Defeat By New Thought And Firm Action, This, Though Not Easy, Is The Work Of Divine Men.

Truth Is Handsomer Than The Affectation Of Love. Your Goodness Must Have Some Edge To It, Else It Is None.

I Am So Much A Unitarian As This: That I Believe The Human Mind Can Admit But One God, And That Every Effort To Pay Religious Homage To More Than One Being Goes To Take Away All Right Ideas.

Men Love To Wonder, And That Is The Seed Of Our Science, And Such Is The Mechanical Determination Of Our Age, And So Recent Are Our Best Contrivances, That Use Has Not Dulled Our Joy And Pride In Them. These Arts Open Great Gates Of A Future, Promising To Make The World Plastic And To Lift Human Life Out Of Its Beggary To A Godlike Ease And Power.

Difficulties Exist To Be Surmounted.

Common Sense Is Genius Dressed In Its Working Clothes.

Good Breeding, A Union Of Kindness And Independence.

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 Obey Our Own Polarity.

Sport Is The Bloom And Glow Of A Perfect Health. The Great Will Not Condescend To Take Anything Seriously; All Must Be As Gay As The Song Of A Canary, Though It Were The Building Of Cities, Or The Eradication Of Old And Foolish Churches And Nations, Which Have Cumbered The Earth Long Thousands Of Years.

Black Men Built The Railroads, Not Blue Eyes.

Nothing Great Ever Happened Without Enthusiasm.

There Is A Kind Of Latent Omniscience, Not Only In Every Man, But In Every Particle.

An Imaginative Book Renders Us Much More Service At First, By Stimulating Us Through Its Tropes, Than Afterward, When We Arrive Atthe Precise Sense Of The Author. I Think Nothing Is Of Any Value In Books, Excepting The Transcendental And Extraordinary.

A Foolish Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Adored By Little Statesmen And Philosophers And Divines. With Consistency A Great Soul Has Simply Nothing To Do. He May As Well Concern Himself With His Shadow On The Wall. Speak What You Think Now In Hard Words And To-morrow Speak What To-morrow Thinks In Hard Words Again, Though It Contradict Every Thing You Said To-day.

The Only True Gifts Are A Portion Of Yourself.

Men Are So Charmed With Valor That They Have Pleased Themselves With Being Called Lions, Leopards, Eagles And Dragons, From The Animals Contemporary With Us In The Geologic Formations.

It Is About Your Outlook Towards Life. You Can Either Regret Or Rejoice.

A Man Must Be In Sympathy With Society Around Him, Or Else, Not Wish To Be In Sympathy With It. If Neither Of These Two, He Must Be Wretched.

I Have Been Told By Persons Of Experience In Matters Of Taste, That The Fashions Follow A Law Of Gradation, And Are Never Arbitrary. The New Mode Is Always Only A Step Onward In The Same Direction As The Last Mode; And A Cultivated Eye Is Prepared For And Predicts The New Fashion.

The Foundations Of A Person Are Not In Matter But In Spirit.

The Unstable Estimates Of Men Crowd To Him Whose Mind Is Filled With A Truth, As The Heaped Waves Of The Atlantic Follow The Moon.

Revolutions Go Not Backward.

When The Literary Class Betray A Destitution Of Faith, It Is Not Strange That Society Should Be Disheartened And Sensualized By Unbelief.

The Writer, Like A Priest, Must Be Exempted From Secular Labor. His Work Needs A Frolic Health; He Must Be At The Top Of His Condition.

The God Who Made New Hampshire Taunted The Lofty Land With Little Men.

Two May Talk And One May Hear, But Three Cannot Take Part In A Conversation Of The Most Sincere And Searching Sort.

Heaven Is Large, And Affords Space For All Modes Of Love And Fortitude.

The Evolution Of A Highly Destined Society Must Be Moral; It Must Run In The Grooves Of The Celestial Wheels.

The Senses Interfere Everywhere, And Mix Their Own Structure With All They Report Of.

God May Forgive Sins, He Said, But Awkwardness Has No Forgiveness In Heaven Or Earth.

When Private Men Shall Act With Original Views, The Lustre Will Be Transferred From The Actions Of Kings To Those Of Gentlemen.

Whenever A True Theory Appears, It Will Be Its Own Evidence. Its Test Is, That It Will Explain All Phenomena.

The World Is His Who Can See Through Its Pretension. What Deafness, What Stone-blind Custom, What Overgrown Error You Behold, Is There Only By Sufferance,--by Your Sufferance. See It To Be A Lie, And You Have Already Dealt It Its Mortal Blow.

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

Wise Men Are Not Wise At All Times.

Nor Has Science Sufficient Humanity, So Long As The Naturalist Overlooks The Wonderful Congruity Which Subsists Between Man And The World; Of Which He Is Lord, Not Because He Is The Most Subtile Inhabitant, But Because He Is Its Head And Heart, And Finds Something Of Himself In Every Great And Small Thing, In Every Mountain Stratum, In Every New Law Of Color, Fact Of Astronomy, Or Atmospheric Influence Which Observation Or Analysis Lay Open.

Patience And Fortitude Conquer All Things.

And What Is Genius But Finer Love, A Love Impersonal, A Love Of The Flower And Perfection Of Things, And A Desire To Draw A New Picture Or Copy Of The Same? It Looks To The Cause And Life: It Proceeds From Within Outward, Whilst Talent Goes From Without Inward.

The Virtue In Most Request Is Conformity.

The First Steps In Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those First Steps Which The Farmer, The Hunter, And The Sailor Take,) Teach That Nature's Dice Are Always Loaded; That In Her Heaps And Rubbish Are Concealed Sure And Useful Results.

Books Are The Best Of Things, Well Used; Abused, Among The Worst...they Are For Nothing But To Inspire.

What Opium Is Instilled Into All Disaster? It Shows Formidable As We Approach It, But There Is At Last No Rough Rasping Friction,but The Most Slippery Sliding Surfaces. We Fall Soft On A Thought.

Let None Presume To Measure The Irregularities Of Michael Angelo Or Socrates By Village Scales.

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

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

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

The Corruption Of Man Is Followed By The Corruption Of Language.

The Scholar Was Not Raised By The Sacred Thoughts Amongst Which He Dwelt, But Used Them To Selfish Ends. He Was A Profane Person,and Became A Showman, Turning His Gifts To Marketable Use, And Not To His Own Sustenance And Growth. It Was Found That The Intellect Could Be Independently Developed, That Is, In Separation From The Man, As Any Single Organ Can Be Invigorated, And The Result Was Monstrous.

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Life Is A Boundless Privilege, And When You Pay For Your Ticket, And Get Into The Car, You Have No Guess What Good Company You Shall Find There.

Truth Is Too Simple For Us: We Do Not Like Those Who Unmask Our Illusions.

Not The Sun Or Summer Alone, But Every Hour And Season Yields Its Tribute Of Delight.

Good As Is Discourse, Silence Is Better And Shames It.

Valor Consists In The Power Of Self Recovery.

In A World Of Infinite Choice People Are Struggling To Figure Out What To Do.

A Little Consideration Of What Takes Place Around Us Every Day Would Show Us That A Higher Law Than That Of Our Will Regulates Events; That Our Painful Labors Are Unnecessary And Fruitless; That Only In Our Easy, Simple, Spontaneous Action Are We Strong . . . . 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.

Reality Is A Sliding Door.

The Chief Mourner Does Not Always Attend The Funeral.

We Are Born Believing. A Man Bears Beliefs As A Tree Bears Apples.

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.

New Arts Destroy The Old.

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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.

Ten Percent Of People Can Think, Another Ten Percent Of People Think That They Think, And Eighty Percent Of People Would Rather Die Than Be Made To Think.

All Persons Are Puzzles Until At Last We Find In Some Word Or Act The Key To The Man, To The Woman; Straightway All Their Past Words And Actions Lie In Light Before Us.

The Use Of Natural History Is To Give Us Aid In Supernatural History: The Use Of The Outer Creation, To Give Us Language For The Beings And Changes Of The Inward Creation.

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The Brevity Of Human Life Gives A Melancholy To The Profession Of The Architect.

Among Provocative, The Next Best Thing To Good Preaching Is Bad Preaching.

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If You Want To Be Great And Successful, Choose People Who Are Great And Successful And Walk Side By Side With Them.

Courage Of The Soldier Awakes The Courage Of Woman.

The Hero Is Suffered To Be Himself.

To The Body And Mind Which Have Been Cramped By Noxious Work Or Company, Nature Is Medicinal And Restores Their Tone.

What Is Man Born For But To Be A Reformer, A Remaker Of What Man Has Made? A Renouncer Of Lies; A Restorer Of Truth And Good? Imitating That Great Nature Which Embossoms Us All, And Which Sleeps No Moment On An Old Past, But Every Hour Repairs Herself, Yielding Us Every Morning A New Day, With Every Breath A New Life?

Good As Is Discourse, Silence Is Better, And Shames It. The Length Of The Discourse Indicates The Distance Of Thought Betwixt The Speaker And The Hearer. If They Were At A Perfect Understanding In Any Part, No Words Would Be Necessary Thereon. If At One In All Parts, No Words Would Be Suffered.

When Science Is Learned In Love, And Its Powers Are Wielded By Love, They Will Appear The Supplements And Continuations Of The Material Creation.

How Cunningly Nature Hides Every Wrinkle Of Her Inconceivable Antiquity Under Roses And Violets And Morning Dew!

A Man's Fortunes Are The Fruit Of His Character. A Man's Friends Are His Magnetisms.

The Person Who Screams, Or Uses The Superlative Degree, Or Converses With Heat Puts Whole Drawing-rooms To Flight. If You Wish To Be Loved, Love Measure.

My Life Is Superficial, Takes No Root In The Deep World; I Ask, When Shall I Die, And Be Relieved Of The Responsibility Of Seeinga Universe Which I Do Not Use? I Wish To Exchange This Flash-of-lightning Faith For Continuous Daylight, This Fever-glow For A Benign Climate.

All The Facts Of Nature Are Nouns Of The Intellect, And Make The Grammar Of The Eternal Language. Every Word Has A Double, Trebleor Centuple Use And Meaning.

Each Man Has An Aptitude Born With Him. Do Your Work.

Silent Rushes The Swift Lord Through Ruined Systems Still Restored, Broadsowing, Bleak And Void To Bless, Plants With Worlds The Wilderness; Waters With Tears Of Ancient Sorrow Apples Of Eden Ripe To-morrow. House And Tenant Go To Ground, Lost In God, In Godhead Found.

Machinery Is Aggressive. The Weaver Becomes A Web, The Machinist A Machine. If You Do Not Use The Tools, They Use You. All Tools Are In One Sense Edge-tools, And Dangerous.

The Solar System Has No Anxiety About Its Reputation, And The Credit Of Truth And Honesty Is As Safe; Nor Have I Any Fear That A Skeptical Bias Can Be Given By Leaning Hard On The Sides Of Fate, Of Practical Power, Or Of Trade, Which The Doctrine Of Faith Cannot Down-weigh.

I Honor Health As The First Muse.

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Every Man Supposes Himself Not To Be Fully Understood Or Appreciated.

It Is Said That When Manners Are Licentious, A Revolution Is Always Near: The Virtue Of Woman Being The Main Girth And Bandage Ofsociety; Because A Man Will Not Lay Up An Estate For Children Any Longer Than Whilst He Believes Them To Be His Own.

But To Most Of Us Society Shows Not Its Face And Eye, But Its Side And Back. To Stand In True Relations With Men In A False Age Isworth A Fit Of Insanity, Is It Not?

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This Knot Of Nature Is So Well Tied That Nobody Was Ever Cunning Enough To Find The Two Ends.

I--this Thought Which Is Called I--is The Mould Into Which The World Is Poured Like Melted Wax.

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Every Hero Becomes A Bore At Last.

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The Cruelest Foe Is A Masked Benefactor. The Wars Which Make History So Dreary Have Served The Cause Of Truth And Virtue.

Whatever It Is, It's Better In The Wind.

Flowers Are The Earth Laughing.

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