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It Is A Mischievous Notion That We Are Come Late Into Nature; That The World Was Finished A Long Time Ago. As The World Was Plastic And Fluid In The Hands Of God, So It Is Ever To So Much Of His Attributes As We Bring To It. To Ignorance And Sin, It Is Flint. They Adapt To Themselves To It As They May; But In Proportion As A Man Has Anything In Him Divine, The Firmament Flows Before Him And Takes His Signet And Form.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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It Is A Mischievous

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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It Is A Mischievous Notion That We Are Come Late Into Nature; That The World Was Finished A Long Time Ago. As The World Was Plastic And Fluid In The Hands Of God, So It Is Ever To So Much Of His Attributes As We Bring To It. To Ignorance And Sin, It Is Flint. They Adapt To Themselves To It As They May; But In Proportion As A Man Has Anything In Him Divine, The Firmament Flows Before Him And Takes His Signet And Form.

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Our Health Is Our Sound Relation To External Objects; Our Sympathy With External Being.

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

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.

Intellectual Tasting Of Life Will Not Supersede Muscular Activity. If A Man Should Consider The Nicety Of The Passage Of A Piece Of Bread Down His Throat, He Would Starve.

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.

Everywhere I Am Hindered Of Meeting God In My Brother, Because He Has Shut His Own Temple Doors And Recites Fables Merely Of His Brother's, Or His Brother's Brother's God.

Belief Consists In Accepting The Affirmations Of The Soul; Unbelief In Denying Them.

We Estimate The Wisdom Of Nations By Seeing What They Did With Their Surplus Capital.

Tell Them Dear, That If Eyes Were Made For Seeing, Then Beauty Is Its Own Excuse For Being: Why Thou Wert There, O Rival Of The Rose! I Never Sought To Ask, I Never Knew: But, In My Simple Ignorance Suppose The Selfsame Power That Brought Me There Brought You.

People That Seem So Glorious Are All Show; Underneath They Are Like Everyone Else.

Our People Are Slow To Learn The Wisdom Of Sending Character Instead Of Talent To Congress. Again And Again They Have Sent A Man Of Great Acuteness, A Fine Scholar, A Fine Forensic Orator, And Some Master Of The Brawls Has Crunched Him Up In His Hands Like A Bit Of Paper.

The Wise Through Excess Of Wisdom Is Made A Fool.

I Wiped Away The Weeds And Foam, I Fetched My Sea-borne Treasures Home.

The Louder He Talked Of His Honor, The Faster We Counted Our Spoons.

We Must Be Our Own Before We Can Be Another's.

I Wish To Say What I Think And Feel Today, With The Proviso That Tomorrow Perhaps I Shall Contradict It All.

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

History No Longer Shall Be A Dull Book. It Shall Walk Incarnate In Every Just And Wise Man. You Shall Not Tell Me By Language And Titles A Catalogue Of The Volumes You Have Read. You Shall Make Me Feel What Periods You Have Lived.

One Single Idea May Have Greater Weight Than All The Men, Animals, And Machines For A Century.

In Every Man's Memory, With The Hours When Life Culminated Are Usually Associated Certain Books Which Met His Views.

Men Of God Have Always, From Time To Time, Walked Among Men, And Made Their Commission Felt In The Heart And Soul Of The Commonest Hearer.

Our Prejudices Are Our Robbers, They Rob Us Valuable Things In Life. People Only See What They Are Prepared To See.

Nature Ever Faithful Is To Such As Trust Her Faithfulness.

Do The Thing And You Will Have The Power.

Men Of Sense Esteem Wealth To Be The Assimilation Of Nature To Themselves, The Converting Of The Sap And Juices Of The Planet To The Incarnation And Nutriment Of Their Design.

A Deep Man Believes That The Evil Eye Can Whither, The Heart's Blessing Can Heal, And That Love Can Overcome All Odds.

The Conscious Utterance Of Thought, By Speech Or Action, To Any End, Is Art.

The Whole Value Of History, Of Biography, Is To Increase My Self-trust, By Demonstrating What Man Can Be And Do.

If You Take In A Lie, You Must Take In All That Belongs To It.

The Measure Of A Master Is His Success In Bringing All Men Around To His Opinion Twenty Years Later.

Congratulations

It Happens To Us Once Or Twice In A Lifetime To Be Drunk With Some Book Which Probably Has Some Extraordinary Relative Power To Intoxicate Us And None Other; And Having Exhausted That Cup Of Enchantment We Go Groping In Libraries All Our Years Afterwards In The Hope Of Being In Paradise Again.

Not Out Of Those, On Whom Systems Of Education Have Exhausted Their Culture, Comes The Helpful Giant To Destroy The Old Or To Build The New, But Out Of Unhandselled Savage Nature, Out Of Terrible Druids And Berserkirs, Come At Last Alfred And Shakespeare.

Bare Lists Of Words Are Found Suggestive To An Imaginative And Excited Mind.

Men Lose Their Tempers In Defending Their Taste.

We Boast Our Emancipation From Many Superstitions; But If We Have Broken Any Idols, It Is Through A Transfer Of Idolatry.

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.

For, Truly Speaking, Whoever Provokes Me To A Good Act Or Thought Has Given Me A Pledge Of His Fidelity To Virtue,--he Has Come Under The Bonds To Adhere To That Cause To Which We Are Jointly Attached.

A Friend Is A Person Who Goes Around Saying Nice Things About You Behind Your Back.

Cute Friendship

Behind Your Back

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

A Friend Is A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere. Before Him I May Think Aloud. I Am Arrived At Last In The Presence Of A Man So Real And Equal, That I May Drop Even Those Undermost Garments Of Dissimulation, Courtesy, And Second Thought, Which Men Never Put Off, And May Deal With Him With The Simplicity And Wholeness With Which One Chemical Atom Meets Another.

Every Sweet Has Its Sour; Every Evil Its Good.

The Chief Value Of The New Fact Is To Enhance The Great And Constant Fact Of Life.

Man Is Timid And Apologetic; He Is No Longer Upright; He Dares Not Say "i Think," "i Am," But Quotes Some Saint Or Sage.

Good Writing Is A Kind Of Skating Which Carries Off The Performer Where He Would Not Go.

We Know That Madness Belongs To Love,--what Power To Paint A Vile Object In Hues Of Heaven.

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

Men Seek To Be Great; They Would Have Offices, Wealth, Power, And Fame. They Think That To Be Great Is To Possess One Side Of Nature,--the Sweet, Without The Other Side,--the Bitter.

The Narrow Sectarian Cannot Read Astronomy With Impunity. The Creeds Of His Church Shrivel Like Dried Leaves At The Door Of The Observatory.

How Silent, How Spacious, What Room For All, Yet Without Place To Insert An Atom--in Graceful Succession, In Equal Fullness, In Balanced Beauty, The Dance Of The Hours Goes Forward Still. Like An Odor Of Incense, Like A Strain Of Music, Like A Sleep, It Is Inexact And Boundless. It Will Not Be Dissected, Nor Unraveled, Nor Shown.

No Nation Has Produced Anything Like His Equal. There Is No Quality In The Human Mind, There Is No Class Of Topics, There Is No Region Of Thought, In Which He Has Not Soared Or Descended, And None In Which He Has Not Said The Commanding Word.

Though We Love Goodness And Not Stealing, Yet Also We Love Freedom And Not Preaching.

Beauty Through My Senses Stole; I Yielded Myself To The Perfect Whole.

Everything Teaches Transition, Transference, Metamorphosis: Therein Is Human Power, In Transference, Not In Creation; & Therein Is Human Destiny, Not In Longevity But In Removal. We Dive & Reappear In New Places.

We Dress Our Garden, Eat Our Dinners, Discuss The Household With Our Wives, And These Things Make No Impression, Are Forgotten Next Week; But In The Solitude To Which Every Man Is Always Returning, He Has A Sanity And Revelations, Which In His Passage Into New Worlds He Will Carry With Him. Never Mind The Ridicule, Never Mind The Defeat: Up Again, Old Heart! — It Seems To Say, — There Is Victory Yet For All Justice; And The True Romance Which The World Exists To Realize, Will Be The Transformation Of Genius Into Practical Power.

Crime And Punishment Grow Out Of One Stem.

If You Love And Serve Man, You Cannot, By Any Hiding Or Stratagem, Escape Remuneration.

A Mob Cannot Be A Permanency: Everybody's Interest Requires That It Should Not Exist, And Only Justice Satisfies All.

Eloquence Shows The Power And Possibility Of Man. There Is One Of Whom We Took No Note, But On A Certain Occasion It Appears That He Has A Secret Virtue Never Suspected - That He Can Paint What Has Occurred And What Must Occur, With Such Clearness To A Company, As If They Saw It Done Before Their Eyes. By Leading Their Thought He Leads Their Will, And Can Make Them Do Gladly What An Hour Ago They Would Not Believe That They Could Be Led To Do At All.

I Like People Who Like Plato.

The Terrors Of The Child Are Quite Reasonable, And Add To His Loveliness; For His Utter Ignorance And Weakness, And His Enchanting Indignation On Such A Small Basis Of Capital Compel Every Bystander To Take His Part.

A Man Cannot Speak But He Judges Himself. With His Will Or Against His Will He Draws His Portrait To The Eye Of His Companions By Every Word. Every Opinion Reacts On Him Who Utters It. It Is A Threadball Thrown At A Mark, But The Other End Remains On The Thrower

Nor Knowest Thou What Argument Thy Life To Thy Neighbor's Creed Has Lent. All Are Needed By Each One; Nothing Is Fair Or Good Alone.

A Man Will Be Eloquent If You Give Him Good Wine.

The Greek Epigram Intimates That The Force Of Love Is Not Shown By The Courting Of Beauty, But Where The Like Desire Is Inflamed For One Who Is Ill-favored.

The Time Will Come When The Evil Forms We Have Known Can No More Be Organized. Man's Culture Can Spare Nothing, Wants All Material. He Is To Convert All Impediments Into Instruments, All Enemies Into Power.

When A Whole Nation Is Roaring Patriotism At The Top Of Its Voice, I Am Fain To Explore The Cleanness Of Its Hands And The Purity Of Its Heart.

Men Are Respectable Only As They Respect.

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

The Possibility Of Interpretation Lies In The Identity Of The Observer With The Observed. Each Material Thing Has Its Celestial Side; Has Its Translation, Through Humanity, Into The Spiritual And Necessary Sphere, Where It Plays A Part As Indestructible As Any Other.

We Expect A Great Man To Be A Good Reader.

Open The Doors Of Opportunity To Talent And Virtue And They Will Do Themselves Justice, And Property Will Not Be In Bad Hands.

But Hospitality Must Be For Service, And Not For Show, Or It Pulls Down The Host. The Brave Soul Rates Itself Too High To Value Itself By The Splendor Of Its Table And Draperies. It Gives What It Hath, And All It Hath, But Its Own Majesty Can Lend A Better Grace To Bannocks And Fair Water Than Belong To City Feasts.

Only By Obedience To His Genius; Only By The Freest Activity In The Way Constitutional To Him, Does An Angel Seem To Arise Beforea Man, And Lead Him By The Hand Out Of All The Wards Of The Prison.

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

The Axioms Of Physics Translate The Laws Of Ethics. Thus, "the Whole Is Greater Than Its Part;" "reaction Is Equal To Action;" "the Smallest Weight May Be Made To Lift The Greatest, The Difference Of Weight Being Compensated By Time;" And Many The Like Propositions, Which Have An Ethical As Well As Physical Sense. These Propositions Have A Much More Extensive And Universal Sense When Applied To Human Life, Than When Confined To Technical Use.

The World Is The Ring Of His Spells, And The Play Of His Miracles.

Shall I Tell You The Secret Of The True Scholar? It Is This: Every Man I Meet Is My Master In Some Point, And In That I Learn Of Him.

Genius, Even, As It Is The Greatest Good, Is He Greatest Harm.

Labor Is God's Education.

Thus Is Man Made Equal To Every Event. He Can Face Danger For The Right. A Poor, Tender, Painful Body, He Can Run Into Flame Or Bullets Or Pestilence, With Duty For His Guide.

Do Not Be Too Timid And Squeamish About Your Actions.

Will And Determination

Books Are For Nothing But To Inspire

Is Not Prayer A Study Of Truth, A Sally Of The Soul Into The Unfound Infinite? No Man Ever Prayed Heartily Without Learning Something.

Science Does Not Know Its Debt To Imagination. Goethe Did Not Believe That A Great Naturalist Could Exist Without This Faculty.

Trust Thyself: Every Heart Vibrates To That Iron String. Accept The Place The Divine Providence Has Found For You, The Society Of Your Contemporaries, The Connection Of Events. Great Men Have Always Done So, And Confided Themselves Childlike To The Genius Of Their Age, Betraying Their Perception That The Absolutely Trustworthy Was Seated At Their Heart, Working Through Their Hands, Predominating In All Their Being.

The Reason Why Any One Refuses His Assent To Your Opinion, Or His Aid To Your Benevolent Design, Is In You: He Refuses To Accept You As A Bringer Of Truth, Because, Though You Think You Have It, He Feels That You Have It Not. You Have Not Given Him The Authentic Sign.

You May Regret Calamities If You Can Thereby Help The Sufferer, But If You Cannot, Mind Your Own Business.

Mind Your Own Business

[t]omorrow Is A New Day. You Shall Begin It Well & Serenely, & With Too High A Spirit To Be Cumbered With Your Old Nonsense. This Day ... Is Too Dear With Its Hopes & Invitations To Waste A Moment On The Rotten Yesterdays.

Self Sacrifice Is The Real Miracle Out Of Which All The Reported Miracles Grow.

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.

Only The Great Generalizations Survive. The Sharp Words Of The Declaration Of Independence, Lampooned Then And Since As 'glittering Generalities,' Have Turned Out Blazing Ubiquities That Will Burn Forever And Ever.

Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit. To A Man Laboring Under Calamity The Heat Of His Own Fire Hath Sadness In It. Then There Is A Kind Of Contempt Of The Landscape Felt By Him Who Has Just Lost By Death A Dear Friend. The Sky Is Less Grand As It Shuts Down Over Less Worth In The Population.

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

The Religion Of One Age Is The Literary Entertainment Of The Next.

Those Who Have Ruled Human Destinies, Like Planets, For Thousands Of Years, Were Not Handsome Men.

In Self-trust All The Virtues Are Comprehended.

The Indian Who Was Laid Under A Curse, That The Wind Should Not Blow On Him, Nor Water Flow To Him, Nor Fire Burn Him, Is A Type Of Us All. The Dearest Events Are Summer-rain, And We The Para Coats That Shed Every Drop. Nothing Is Left Us Now But Death. We Look To That With A Grim Satisfaction, Saying, There At Least Is Reality That Will Not Dodge Us.

In Politics And In Trade, Bruisers And Pirates Are Of Better Promise Than Talkers And Clerks.

If We Follow The Truth, It Will Bring Us Out Safe At Last.

Each Mind Has Its Own Method.

Talent May Frolic And Juggle; Genius Realizes And Adds.

A Man Is Related To All Nature.

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

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.

The Soul Is No Traveller; The Wise Man Stays At Home, And When His Necessities, His Duties, On Any Occasion Call Him From His House, Or Into Foreign Lands, He Is At Home Still, And Shall Make Men Sensible By The Expression Of His Countenance, That He Goes The Missionary Of Wisdom And Virtue, And Visits Cities And Men Like A Sovereign, And Not Like An Interloper Or A Valet.

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

Love Not The Flower They Pluck And Know It Not, And All Their Botany Is Latin Names.

But The Man And Woman Of Seventy Assume To Know All, They Have Outlived Their Hope, They Renounce Aspiration, Accept The Actual For The Necessary And Talk Down To The Young. Let Them Then Become Organs Of The Holy Ghost; Let Them Be Lovers; Let Them Behold Truth; And Their Eyes Are Uplifted, Their Wrinkles Smoothed, They Are Perfumed Again With Hope And Power.

The Religions We Call False Were Once True.

All The Great Ages Have Been Ages Of Belief.

A Home Kept To The End Of Display Is Impossible To All But A Few Women, And Their Success Is Dearly Bought.

Life Is A Search After Power; And This Is An Element With Which The World Is So Saturated,-there Is No Chink Or Crevice In Which It Is Not Lodged,-that No Honest Seeking Goes Unrewarded.

You Do Not Get Power So That You Can Go Out And Do Things, You Go Out And Do Things And You Will Get The Power

Liberty Is Slow Fruit. It Is Never Cheap; It Is Made Difficult Because Freedom Is The Accomplishment And Perfectness Of Man.

A Man Cannot Speak But He Judges Himself

Being Perfectly Well-dressed Gives A Feeling Of Tranquillity That Religion Is Powerless To Bestow.

Be As Beneficent As The Sun Or The Sea, But If Your Rights As A Rational Being Are Trenched On, Die On The First Inch Of Your Territory.

A Mind Does Not Receive Truth As A Chest Receives Jewels That Are Put Into It, But As The Stomach Takes Up Food Into The System. It Is No Longer Food, But Flesh, And Is Assimilated. The Appetite And The Power Of Digestion Measure Our Right To Knowledge. He Has It Who Can Use It. As Soon As Our Accumulation Overruns Our Invention Or Power To Use, The Evils Of Intellectual Gluttony Begin,— Congestion Of The Brain, Apoplexy And Strangulation.

All Are Needed By Each One; Nothing Is Fair Or Good Alone.

...most Men Have Bound Their Eyes With One Or Another Handkerchief, And Attached Themselves To Some One Of These Communities Of Opinion. This Conformity Makes Them Not False In A Few Particulars, Authors Of A Few Lies, But False In All Particulars. Their Every Truth Is Not Quite True. Their Two Is Not The Real Two, Their Four Not The Real Four; So That Every Word They Say Chagrins Us, And We Know Not Where To Begin To Set Them Right.

In Certain Men Digestion And Sex Absorb The Vital Force, And The Stronger These Are, The Individual Is So Much Weaker. The More Ofthese Drones Perish, The Better For The Hive.

In The Greek Cities, It Was Reckoned Profane, That Any Person Should Pretend A Property In A Work Of Art, Which Belonged To All Who Could Behold It.

An Original Sentence, A Step Forward, Is Worth More Than All The Censures.

We Stand Against Fate, As Children Stand Up Against The Wall In Their Father's House, And Notch Their Height From Year To Year. But When The Boy Grows To A Man, And Is Master Of The House, He Pulls Down That Wall And Builds It New And Bigger.

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

Love Should Make Joy; But Our Benevolence Is Unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, And Churches, And Pauper-societies Are Yokes To The Neck. We Pain Ourselves To Please Nobody.

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

Don't Set Out To Teach Theism From Your Natural History... You Spoil Both.

Science And Religion

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.

The Day Is Always His, Who Works In It With Serenity And Great Aims.

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.

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.

Humility Is The Secret Of The Wise.

Men Admire The Man Who Can Organize Their Wishes And Thoughts In Stone And Wood And Steel And Brass.

God Builds His Temple In The Heart On The Ruins Of Churches And Religions.

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

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

Things Bring Their Own Philosophy With Them, That Is, Prudence.

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 Read Your Piece On Plato. Holmes, When You Strike At A King, You Must Kill Him.

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

Beauty Is The Mark God Sets On Virtue. Every Natural Action Is Graceful; Every Heroic Act Is Also Decent, And Causes The Place And The Bystanders To Shine.

How Often We Must Remember The Art Of The Surgeon, Which, In Replacing The Broken Bone, Contents Itself With Releasing The Parts From False Position; They Fly Into Place By The Action Of The Muscles. On This Art Of Nature All Our Arts Rely.

Nothing Is Great But The Inexhaustible Wealth Of Nature.

Practice Radical Humility." He (or She)who Masters The Art Of Humility Cannot Be Humiliated.

The Man For Whom The Law Exists - The Man Of Forms, The Conservative - Is A Tame Man.

The Soul Refuses Limits And Always Affirms An Optimism, Never A Pessimism.

If You Maintain A Dead Church, Contribute To A Dead Bible-society, Vote With A Great Party Either For The Government Or Against It, Spread Your Table Like Base Housekeepers, - Under All These Screens I Have Diffuculty To Detect The Precise Man You Are: And Of Course So Much Force Is Withdrawn From Your Proper Life. But Do Your Work And I Shall Know You. Do Your Work, And You Shall Reinforce Yourself. A Man Must Consider What A Blind-man's Bluff Is This Game Of Conformity. If I Know Your Sect I Anticipate Your Argument.

In The Hands Of The Discoverer, Medicine Becomes A Heroic Art . . Wherever Life Is Dear He Is A Demigod.

The Colleges, While They Provide Us With Libraries, Furnish No Professors Of Books; And I Think No Chair Is So Much Needed.

Science In England, In America, Is Jealous Of Theory, Hates The Name Of Love And Moral Purpose. There's Revenge For This Humanity.what Manner Of Man Does Science Make? The Boy Is Not Attracted. He Says, I Do Not Wish To Be Such A Kind Of Man As My Professor Is.

We Have A Great Deal More Kindness Than Is Ever Spoken. (despite) All The Selfishness That Chills Like East Winds The World, The Whole Human Family Is Bathed With An Element Of Love Like A Fine Ether... The Effect Of The Indulgence Of This Human Affection Is A Certain Cordial Exhilaration.

There Is No Architect Can Build As The Muse Can; She Is Skilful To Select Materials For Her Plan.

Law Of Contrariness: Our Chief Want In Life Is Somebody Who Shall Make Us Do What We Can. Having Found Them, We Shall Then Hate Them For It.

The Heroic Cannot Be The Common, Nor The Common The Heroic.

Perpetual Modernism Is The Measure Of Merit In Every Work Of Art.

Works Of The Intellect Are Great Only By Comparison With Each Other.

There Are Moods In Which We Court Suffering, In The Hope That Here, At Least, We Shall Find Reality, Sharp Peaks And Edges Of Truth. But It Turns Out To Be Scene-painting And Counterfeit. The Only Thing Grief Has Taught Me Is To Know How Shallow It Is.

Always Pay; For First Or Last You Must Pay Your Entire Debt.

We Are Thus Assisted By Natural Objects In The Expression Of Particular Meanings. But How Great A Language To Convey Such Pepper-corn Informations!

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

Out Of Love And Hatred, Out Of Earnings And Borrowings And Leadings And Losses; Out Of Sickness And Pain; Out Of Wooing And Worshipping; Out Of Traveling And Voting And Watching And Caring; Out Of Disgrace And Contempt, Comes Our Tuition In The Serene And Beautiful Laws.

The Connection Between Our Knowledge And The Abyss Of Being Is Still Real, And The Explication Must Be Not Less Magnificent.

Courage Of The Soldier Awakes The Courage Of Woman.

For Each Thorn, There's A Rosebud... For Each Twilight - A Dawn... For Each Trial - The Strength To Carry On, For Each Storm Cloud - A Rainbow... For Each Shadow - The Sun... For Each Parting - Sweet Memories When Sorrow Is Done.

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 Best Lightning Rod For Your Protection Is Your Own Spine.

But The Best Read Naturalist Who Lends An Entire And Devout Attention To Truth, Will See That There Remains Much To Learn Of His Relation To The World, And That It Is Not To Be Learned By Any Addition Or Subtraction Or Other Comparison Of Known Quantities, But Is Arrived At By Untaught Sallies Of The Spirit, By A Continual Self-recovery, And By Entire Humility.

He That Rides His Hobby Gently Must Always Give Way To Him That Rides His Hobby Hard.

I Have Never Met A Man Who Was Not My Superior In Some Particular.

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

Religion Is As Effectively Destroyed By Bigotry As By Indifference.

A Good Reader Makes A Good Book

My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

A Cynic Can Chill And Dishearten With A Single Word.

In The Last Analysis, Love Is Only The Reflection Of A Man's Own Worthiness From Other Men.

All Ages Of Belief Have Been Great; All Of Unbelief Have Been Mean.

Art Should Exhilarate, And Throw Down The Walls Of Circumstance On Every Side, Awakening In The Beholder The Same Sense Of Universal Relation And Power Which The Work Evinced In The Artist.

The Pleasure Of Eloquence Is In Greatest Part Owing Often To The Stimulus Of The Occasion Which Produces It- - To The Magic Of Sympathy, Which Exalts The Feeling Of Each By Radiating On Him The Feeling Of All.

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

Good Writing Is A Kind Of Skating Which Carries Off The Performer Where He Would Not Go, And Is Only Right Admirable When To All Its Beauty And Speed A Subserviency To The Will, Like That Of Walking, Is Added.

No Love Can Be Bound By Oath Or Covenant To Secure It Against A Higher Love.

We Talk Of Choosing Our Friends, But Friends Are Self-elected.

Each Religious Sect Has Its Own Physiognomy. The Methodists Have Acquired A Face; The Quakers, A Face; The Nuns, A Face. An Englishman Will Pick Out A Dissenter By His Manners.

I Find Nothing In Fables More Astonishing Than My Experience In Every Hour. One Moment Of A Man's Life Is A Fact So Stupendous As To Take The Luster Out Of Fiction.

Body Cannot Teach Wisdom; God Only.

When It Comes To Divide An Estate, The Politest Men Quarrel.

By Fate, Not Option, Frugal Nature Gave One Scent To Hyson And To Wall-flower, One Sound To Pine-groves And To Water-falls, One Aspect To The Desert And The Lake. It Was Her Stern Necessity : All Things Are Of One Pattern Made; Bird, Beast, And Flower, Song, Picture, Form, Space, Thought, And Character Deceive Us, Seeming To Be Many Things, And Are But One.

Proverbs, Words, And Grammar Inflections Convey The Public Sense With More Purity And Precision, Than The Wisest Individual.

We Do Not Quite Forgive A Giver. The Hand That Feeds Us Is In Some Danger Of Being Bitten.

What I Need Is Someone Who Will Make Me Do What I Can.

The Use Of Literature Is To Afford Us A Platform Whence We May Command A View Of Our Present Life, A Purchase By Which We May Move It....we See Literature Best From The Midst Of Wild Nature, Or From The Din Of Affairs, Or From A High Religion. The Field Cannot Be Well Seen From Within The Field.

Other Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds. Each Man Seeks Those Of Different Quality From His Own, And Such As Are Good Of Their Kind; That Is, He Seeks Other Men, And The Rest.

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

We Wake From One Dream Into Another Dream.

Our Moods Do Not Believe In Each Other.

The Poor And The Low Have Their Way Of Expressing The Last Facts Of Philosophy As Well As You. "blessed Be Nothing," And "the Worse Things Are, The Better They Are," Are Proverbs Which Express The Transcendentalism Of Common Life.

By The Rude Bridge That Arched The Flood, Their Flag To April's Breeze Unfurled, Here Once The Embattled Farmers Stood, And Fired The Shot Heard Round The World.

The Mass Are Animal, In Pupilage, And Near Chimpanzee.

Vanity Costs Money, Labor, Horses, Men, Women, Health And Peace, And Is Still Nothing At Last,--a Long Way Leading Nowhere.

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Beverley Nichols

Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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