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It Is Quite Too Common A Practice, Both In Readers And The More Superficial Class Of Critics, To Judge A Book By What It Is Not, A Matter Much Easier To Determine Than What It Is.

-James Russell Lowell

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It Is Quite Too

James Russell Lowell

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It Is Quite Too Common A Practice, Both In Readers And The More Superficial Class Of Critics, To Judge A Book By What It Is Not, A Matter Much Easier To Determine Than What It Is.

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Now The Heart Is So Full That A Drop Overfills It; We Are Happy Now Because God Wills It.

Earth's Biggest Country 's Gut Her Soul, An' Risen Up Earth's Greatest Nation.

And I Honor The Man Who Is Willing To Sink Half His Present Repute For The Freedom To Think, And, When He Has Thought, Be His Cause Strong Or Weak, Will Risk T' Other Half For The Freedom To Speak.

Behind The Dim Unknown, Standeth God With The Shadow, Keeping Watch Above His Own.

Breaking Silence

No Mud Can Soil Us But The Mud We Throw.

The Riches Of Scholarship, The Benignities Of Literature, Defy Fortune And Outlive Calamity. They Are Beyond The Reach Of Thief Or Moth Or Rust. As They Cannot Be Inherited, So They Cannot, Be Alienated.

Over Our Manhood Bend The Skies; Against Our Fallen And Traitor Lives The Great Winds Utter Prophecies; With Our Faint Hearts The Mountain Strives, Its Arms Outstretched, The Druid Wood Waits With Its Benedicite And To Our Ages Drowsy Blood Still Shouts The Inspiring Sea.

Where One Person Shapes Their Life By Precept And Example, There Are A Thousand Who Have Shaped It By Impulse And Circumstances.

Year By Year, More And More Of The World Gets Disenchanted. Even The Icy Privacy Of The Arctic And Antarctic Circles Is Invaded. We Have Played Jack Horner With Our Earth, Till There Is Never A Plum Left In It.

Keats Longed For Fame, But Longed Above All To Deserve It.

Suddenly All The Sky Is Hid As With The Shutting Of A Lid, One By One Great Drops Are Falling Doubtful And Slow, Down The Pane They Are Crookedly Crawling, And The Wind Breathes Low; Slowly The Circles Widen On The River, Widen And Mingle, One And All; Here And There The Slenderer Flowers Shiver, Struck By An Icy Rain-drop’s Fall.

Laborin' Man An' Laborin' Woman Hev One Glory An' One Shame; Ev'y Thin' Thet' S Done Inhuman Injers All On 'em The Same.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof.

There Is Nothing So Desperately Monotonous As The Sea, And I No Longer Wonder At The Cruelty Of Pirates.

Enthusiasm Begets Enthusiasm, Eloquence Produces Conviction For The Moment; But It Is Only By Truth To Nature And The Everlasting Institutions Of Mankind That Those Abiding Influences Are Won That Enlarge From Generation To Generation.

Metaphor Is No Argument, Though It Be Sometimes The Gunpowder To Drive One Home, And Imbed It In The Memory.

Many-sidedness Of Culture Makes Our Vision Clearer And Keener In Particulars.

A Ginooine Statesman Should Be On His Guard, If He Must Hev Beliefs, Not To B'lieve 'em Too Hard.

Wealth May Be An Excellent Thing, For It Means Power, And It Means Leisure, It Means Liberty.

Console Yourself, Dear Man And Brother; Whatever You May Be Sure Of, Be Sure At Least Of This, That You Are Dreadfully Like Other People. Human Nature Has A Much Greater Genius For Sameness Than For Originality.

He Gives Us The Very Quintessence Of Perception,-the Clearly Crystalized Precipitation Of All That Is Most Precious In The Ferment Of Impression After The Impertinent And Obtrusive Particulars Have Evaporated From The Memory.

In The Scale Of The Destinies, Brawn Will Never Weigh So Mach As Brain.

When I Was A Beggarly Boy, And Lived In A Cellar Damp, I Had Not A Friend Nor A Toy, But I Had Aladdin's Lamp.

O Chime Of Sweet Saint Charity, Peal Soon That Easter Morn When Christ For All Shall Risen Be, And In All Hearts New-born! That Pentecost When Utterance Clear To All Men Shall Be Given, When All Shall Say My Brother Here, And Hear My Son In Heaven!

Let Us Be Thankful That There Is No Court By Which We Can Be Excluded From Our Share In The Inheritance Of The Great Poets Of All Ages And Countries, To Which Our Simple Humanity Entitles Us.

If Youth Be A Defect, It Is One That We Outgrow Only Too Soon.

That Pernicious Sentiment, "our Country, Right Or Wrong."

Now On The Hills I Hear The Thunder Mutter... Nearer And Nearer Rolls The Thunder-clap, - You Can Hear The Quick Heart Of The Tempest Beat.... Look! Look! That Livid Flash! And Instantly Follows The Rattling Thunder, As If Some Cloud-crag, Split Asunder, Fell, Splintering With A Ruinous Crash, On The Earth, Which Crouches In Silence Under; And Now A Solid Gray Wall Of Rain Shuts Off The Landscape, Mile By Mile.

Fanaticism, Or, To Call It By Its Milder Name, Enthusiasm, Is Only Powerful And Active So Long As It Is Aggressive. Establish It Firmly In Power, And It Becomes Conservatism, Whether It Will Or No.

All Thoughts That Mold The Age Begin Deep Down Within The Primitive Soul.

Who Knows Whither The Clouds Have Fled? In The Unscarred Heaven They Leave No Wake; And The Eyes Forget The Tears They Have Shed, The Heart Forgets Its Sorrow And Ache.

Ah, Men Do Not Know How Much Strength Is In Poise, That He Goes The Farthest Who Goes Far Enough.

Borrowed Garments Never Keep One Warm.

In General Those Who Nothing Have To Say Contrive To Spend The Longest Time In Doing It.

No Man, I Suspect, Ever Lived Long In The Country Without Being Bitten By These Meteorological Ambitions. He Likes To Be Hotter And Colder, To Have Been More Deeply Snowed Up, To Have More Trees And Larger Blown Down Than His Neighbors.

Fate Loves Best Such Syllables As Are Sweet And Sonorous On The Tongue.

The Pale And Quiet Moon Makes Her Calm Forehead Bare, And The Last Fragments Of The Storm, Like Shattered Rigging From A Fight At Sea, Silent And Few, Are Drifting Over Me.

Old Gold Has A Civilizing Virtue Which New Gold Must Grow Old To Be Capable Of Secreting.

Take Winter As You Find Him, And He Turns Out To Be A Thoroughly Honest Fellow; With No Nonsense In Him, Which Is A Great Comfort In The Long-run.

Practical Application Is The Only Mordant Which Will Set Things In The Memory. Study Without It Is Gymnastics, And Not Work, Which Alone Will Get Intellectual Bread.

Once To Every Man And Nation, Comes The Moment To Decide, In The Strife Of Truth With Falsehood, For The Good Or Evil Side; Some Great Cause, Some Great Decision, Offering Each The Bloom Or Blight, And The Choice Goes By Forever, ’twixt That Darkness And That Light.

We Kind O' Thought Christ Went Agin War An' Pillage.

The Dandelions And Buttercups Gild All The Lawn: The Drowsy Bee Stumbles Among The Clover Tops, And Summer Sweetens All To Me.

Whatever You May Be Sure Of, Be Sure Of This, That You Are Dreadfully Like Other People.

The Opening Of The First Grammar School Was The Opening Of The First Trench Against Monopoly In Church And State.

Creativity Is Not The Finding Of A Thing, But The Making Something Out Of It After It Is Found.

It Is Curious For One Who Studies The Action And Reaction Of National Literature On Each Other, To See The Humor Of Swift And Sterne And Fielding, After Filtering Through Richter, Reappear In Carlyle With A Tinge Of Germanism That Makes It Novel, Alien, Or Even Displeasing, As The Case May Be, To The English Mind.

Earth Gets Its Price For What Earth Gives Us; The Beggar Is Taxed For A Corner To Die In, The Priest Hath His Fee Who Comes And Shrives Us, We Bargain For The Graves We Lie In; Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold... 't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away, 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking; There Is No Price Set On The Lavish Summer, And June May Be Had By The Poorest Comer.

I Love Her With A Love As Still As A Broad River's Peaceful Might, Which By High Tower And Lowly Mill, Goes Wandering At Its Own Will, And Yet Does Ever Flow Aright.

His Heart Kep' Goin' Pity-pat, But Hern Went Pity-zekle.

[b]ut In Literature, It Should Be Remembered, A Thing Always Becomes His At Last Who Says It Best, And Thus Makes It His Own.

The Heart Forgets Its Sorrow And Ache.

True Freedom Is To Share All The Chains Our Brothers Wear, And, With Heart And Hand, To Be Earnest To Make Others Free!

May Is A Pious Fraud Of The Almanac.

No Man Can Produce Great Things Who Is Not Thoroughly Sincere In Dealing With Himself.

It Was In Making Education Not Only Common To All, But In Some Sense Compulsory On All, That The Destiny Of The Free Republics Of America Was Practically Settled.

It Is Beginning To Be Doubtful Whether Parliament And Congress Sit In Westminster And Washington, Or In The Editorial Rooms Of The Leading Journals,--so Thoroughly Is Everything Debated Before The Authorized And Responsible Debaters Get On Their Legs.

Two Meanings Have Our Lightest Fantasies,- One Of The Flesh, And Of The Spirit One.

But Civlyzation Doos Git Forrid Sometimes Upon A Powder-cart.

Truth Only Needs To Be For Once Spoken Out; And There's Such Music In Her, Such Strange Rhythm, As Makes Men's Memories Her Joyous Slaves.

The Holy Supper Is Kept, Indeed, In Whatso We Share With Anothers Need; Not What We Give, But What We Share, For The Gift Without The Giver Is Bare; Who Gives Himself With His Alms Feeds Three, Himself, His Hungering Neighbor, And Me.

Death Is Delightful. Death Is Dawn, The Waking From A Weary Night Of Fevers Unto Truth And Light.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof; It Is Temporary Expedient, Often Wise In Party Politics, Almost Sure To Be Unwise In Statesmanship.

For There's Nothing We Read Of In Torture's Inventions, Like A Well-meaning Dunce, With The Best Of Intentions.

Truth Forever On The Scaffold, Wrong Forever On The Throne,- Yet That Scaffold Sways The Future, And, Behind The Dim Unknown, Standeth God Within The Shadow, Keeping Watch Above His Own.

Evil Is A Far More Cunning And Persevering Propagandist Than Good, For It Has No Inward Strength, And Is Driven To Seek Countenance And Sympathy.

There Is Something Solid And Doughty In The Man That Can Rise From Defeat, The Stuff Of Which Victories Are Made In Due Time, When We Are Able To Choose Our Position Better, And The Sun Is At Our Back.

Our Seasons Have No Fixed Returns, Without Our Will They Come And Go; At Noon Our Sudden Summer Burns, Ere Sunset All Is Snow.

Men Have Their Intellectual Ancestry, And The Likeness Of Some One Of Them Is Forever Unexpectedly Flashing Out In The Features Of A Descendant, It May Be After A Gap Of Several Centuries. In The Parliament Of The Present Every Man Represents A Constituency Of The Past.

Fashion Being The Art Of Those Who Must Purchase Notice At Some Cheaper Rate Than That Of Being Beautiful, Loves To Do Rash And Extravagant Things. She Must Be Forever New, Or She Becomes Insipid.

New Conditions Of Life Will Stimulate Thought And Give New Forms To Its Expression.

Truly There Is A Tide In The Affairs Of Men; But There Is No Gulf-stream Setting Forever In One Direction.

It Is Only By Instigation Of The Wrongs Of Men That What Are Called The Rights Of Man Become Turbulent And Dangerous.

Freedom Needs All Her Poets; It Is They Who Give Her Aspirations Wings, And To The Wiser Law Of Music Sway Her Wild Imaginings.

Literature, Properly So Called, Draws Its Sap From The Deep Soil Of Human Nature's Common And Everlasting Sympathies, The Gathered Leaf-mound Of Countless Generations, And Not From Any Top Dressing Capriciously Scattered Over The Surface.

The Only Faith That Wears Well And Holds Its Color In All Weathers Is That Which Is Woven Of Conviction And Set With The Sharp Mordant Of Experience.

Folks Never Understand The Folks They Hate.

No Man Is Born Into The World Whose Work Is Not Born With Him. There Is Always Work, And Tools To Work Withal, For Those Who Will; And Blessed Are The Horny Hands Of Toil.

Endurance Is The Crowning Quality, And Patience All The Passion Of Great Hearts.

Ye Come And Go Incessant; We Remain Safe In The Hallowed Quiets Of The Past; Be Reverent, Ye Who Flit And Are Forgot, Of Faith So Nobly Realized As This.

Nature, They Say, Doth Dote, And Cannot Make A Man Save On Some Worn-out Plan Repeating Us By Rote: For Him Her Old World Moulds Aside She Threw And, Choosing Sweet Clay From The Breast Of The Unexhausted West, With Stuff Untainted Shaped A Hero New.

Earth Gets Its Price For What Earth Gives Us.

No Price Is Set On The Lavish Summer; June May Be Had By The Poorest Comer.

Certainly It Is No Shame To A Man That He Should Be As Nice About His Country As His Sweetheart, Yet It Would Not Be Wise To Hold Everyone An Enemy Who Could Not See Her With Our Own Enchanted Eyes.

The Story Of Any One Man's Real Experience Finds Its Startling Parallel In That Of Every One Of Us.

The Quiet Tenderness Of Chaucer, Where You Almost Seem To Hear The Hot Tears Falling, And The Simple Choking Words Sobbed Out.

Our American Republic Will Endure Only As Long As The Ideas Of The Men Who Founded It Continue Dominant.

An Appeal To The Reason Of The People Has Never Been Known To Fail In The Long Run.

A Word Once Vulgarized Can Never Be Rehabilitated.

The Foolish And The Dead Alone Never Change Their Opinions.

If One Waits For The Right Time To Come Before Writing, The Right Time Never Comes.

And The Poorest Twig On The Elm-tree Was Ridged Inch Deep With Pearl.

A Wise Man Travels To Discover Himself.

Attention Is The Stuff That Memory Is Made Of, And Memory Is Accumulated Genius.

Life May Be Given In Many Ways, And Loyalty To Truth Be Sealed As Bravely In The Closet As The Field.

The Mind Can Weave Itself Warmly In The Cocoon Of Its Own Thoughts, And Dwell A Hermit Anywhere.

Sentiment Is Intellectualized Emotion; Emotion Precipitated, As It Were, In Pretty Crystals By The Fancy.

They Enslave Their Children's Children Who Make Compromise With Sin.

But Better Far It Is To Speak One Simple Word, Which Now And Then Shall Waken Their Free Nature In The Weak And Friendless Sons Of Men.

Analysis Is Carried Into Everything. Even Deity Is Subjected To Chemical Tests.

Time Is, After All, The Greatest Of Poets; And The Sons Of Memory Stand A Better Chance Of Being The Heirs Of Fame.

It Is Mediocrity Which Makes Laws And Sets Mantraps And Spring-guns In The Realm Of Free Song, Saying Thus Far Shalt Thou Go And No Further.

A Father Of The Church Said That Property Was Theft, Many Centuries Before Proudhon Was Born. Bourdaloue Reaffirmed It. Montesquieu Was The Inventor Of National Workshops And Of The Theory That The State Owed Every Man A Living. Nay, Was Not The Church Herself The First Organized Democracy?

One Of The Things Particularly Admirable In The Public Utterances Of President Lincoln Is A Certain Tone Of Familiar Dignity, Which, While It Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Attainment Of Mere Style, Is Also No Doubtful Indication Of Personal Character. There Must Be Something Essentially Noble In An Elective Ruler Who Can Descend To The Level Of Confidential Ease Without Forfeiting Respect, Something Very Manly In One Who Can Break Through The Etiquette Of His Conventional Rank And Trust Himself To The Reason And Intelligence Of Those Who Have Elected Him.

Have You Ever Rightly Considered What The Mere Ability To Read Means? That It Is The Key Which Admits Us To The Whole World Of Thought And Fancy And Imagination? To The Company Of Saint And Sage, Of The Wisest And The Wittiest At Their Wisest And Wittiest Moment? That It Enables Us To See With The Keenest Eyes, Hear With The Finest Ears, And Listen To The Sweetest Voices Of All Time? More Than That, It Annihilates Time And Space For Us.

They Talk About Their Pilgrim Blood, Their Birthright High And Holy! A Mountain-stream That Ends In Mud Thinks Is Melancholy.

Count Me O'er Earth's Chosen Heroes, - They Were Souls That Stood Alone, While The Men They Agonized For Hurled The Contumelious Stone, Stood Serene, And Down The Future Saw The Golden Beam Incline To The Side Of Perfect Justice, Mastered By Their Faith Divine, By One Man's Plain Truth To Manhood And To God's Supreme Design.

This Goin' Ware Glory Waits Ye Haint One Agreeable Feetur.

He Gives Only The Worthless Gold Who Gives From A Sense Of Duty.

To Educate The Intelligence Is To Expand The Horizon Of Its Wants And Desires.

Poetry Is Something To Make Us Wiser And Better, By Continually Revealing Those Types Of Beauty And Truth, Which God Has Set In All Men's Souls.

The Nurse Of Full-grown Souls Is Solitude.

Dear Common Flower, That Grow'st Beside The Way, Fringing The Dusty Road With Harmless Gold, First Pledge Of Blithesome May, Which Children Pluck, And, Full Of Pride Uphold.

Reading Enables Us To See With The Keenest Eyes, To Hear With The Finest Ears, And Listen To The Sweetest Voices Of All Time.

The Devil Loves Nothing Better Than The Intolerance Of Reformers.

A Woman's Love Is Mighty, But A Mother's Heart Is Weak, And By Its Weakness Overcomes.

What Men Call Luck Is The Prerogative Of Valiant Souls, The Fealty Life Pays Its Rightful Kings.

Ef You Want Peace, The Thing You've Gut To Du Is Jes' To Show You're Up To Fightin', Tu.

Large Charity Doth Never Soil, But Only Whitens Soft White Hands.

The Rich Man's Sons Inherits Cares; The Bank May Break, The Factory Burn, A Breath May Burst His Bubble Shares, And Soft, White Hands Could Hardly Earn A Living That Would Serve His Turn.

Most Religion-mongers Have Bated Their Paradises With A Bit Of Toasted Cheese. They Have Tempted The Body With Large Promises Of Possessions In Their Transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza Will Not Quit His Chimney-corner, But Under Promise Of Imaginary Islands To Govern.

The New World's Sons From England's Breast We Drew Such Milk As Bids Remember Whence We Came, Proud Of Her Past Wherefrom Our Future Grew, This Window We Inscribe With Raleigh's Fame.

Did Man E'er Live Saw Priest Or Woman Yet Forgive?

Piety Is Indifferent Whether She Enters At The Eye Or At The Ear. There Is None Of The Senses At Which She Does Not Knock One Day Or Other. The Puritans Forgot This, And Thrust Beauty Out Of The Meeting-house And Slammed The Door In Her Face.

Incredulity Robs Us Of Many Pleasures, And Gives Us Nothing In Return.

To Have Greatly Dreamed Precludes Low Ends.

Nature Fits All Her Children With Something To Do, He Who Would Write And Can't Write, Can Surely Review.

If We See Light At The End Of The Tunnel, It's The Light Of The Oncoming Train.

Who Speaks The Truth Stabs Falsehood To The Heart.

I Would Hardly Change The Sorrowful Words Of The Poets For Their Glad Ones. Tears Dampen The Strings Of The Lyre, But They Grow The Tensor For It, And Ring Even The Clearer And More Ravishingly.

I Don't Believe In Principle, But I Do In Interest.

Praise Follows Truth Afar Off, And Only Overtakes Her At The Grave; Plausibility Clings To Her Skirts And Holds Her Back Till Then

A Friendship Counting Nearly Forty Years Is The Finest Kind Of Shade-tree I Know.

In The Storm, Like A Prophet O'ermaddened, Thou Singest And Tossest Thy Branches; Thy Heart With The Terror Is Gladdened, Thou Forebodest The Dread Avalanches.... In The Calm Thou O'erstretchest The Valleys With Thine Arms, As If Blessings Imploring, Like An Old King Led Forth From His Palace, When His People To Battle Are Pouring.

Life Is A Sheet Of Paper White / Whereon Each One Of Us May Write / His Word Or Two, And Then Comes Night.

There Is Something Magnificent In Having A Country To Love.

Life Is The Jailer, Death The Angel Sent To Draw The Unwilling Bolts And Set Us Free.

The Don Quixote Of One Generation May Live To Hear Himself Called The Savior Of Society By The Next.

To Genius Life Never Grows Commonplace.

Joy Comes, Grief Goes, We Know Not How.

New Occasions Teach New Duties.

Onward And Upward

True Scholarship Consists In Knowing Not What Things Exist, But What They Mean; It Is Not Memory But Judgment.

If God Made Poets For Anything, It Was To Keep Alive The Traditions Of The Pure, The Holy, And The Beautiful.

In The Ocean Of Baseness, The Deeper We Get, The Easier The Sinking.

He Who Keeps His Faith Only, Cannot Be Discrowned.

The Right To Be A Cussed Fool Is Safe From All Devices Human, It's Common (ez A Gin'i Rule) To Every Critter Born Of Woman.

I Tell Ye Wut, My Judgment Is You're Pooty Sure To Fail, Ez Long 'z The Head Keeps Turnin' Back For Counsel To The The Tail.

That Cause Is Strong Which Has, Not A Multitude, But One Strong Man Behind It.

Here Was A Type Of The True Elder Race, And One Of Plutarch's Men Talked With Us Face To Face.

History Is Clarified Experience.

The Greatest Homage We Can Pay To Truth, Is To Use It.

Through Aisles Of Long-drawn Centuries My Spirit Walks In Thought.

Making One Object, In Outward Or Inward Nature, More Holy To A Single Heart Is Reward Enough For A Life; For The More Sympathies We Gain Or Awaken For What Is Beautiful, By So Much Deeper Will Be Our Sympathy For That Which Is Most Beautiful,--the Human Soul!

He Who Is Firmly Seated In Authority Soon Learns To Think Security, And Not Progress, The Highest Lesson In Statecraft.

The Only Conclusive Evidence Of A Man's Sincerity Is That He Gives Himself For A Principle. Words, Money, All Things Else, Are Comparatively Easy To Give Away; But When A Man Makes A Gift Of His Daily Life And Practice, It Is Plain That The Truth, Whatever It May Be, Has Taken Possession Of Him.

While Tenderness Of Feeling And Susceptibility To Generous Emotions Are Accidents Of Temperament, Goodness Is An Achievement Of The Will And A Quality Of The Life.

Communism Means Barbarism.

At The Devil's Booth Are All Things Sold. Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold.

Men's Thoughts And Opinions Are In A Great Degree Vassals Of Him Who Invents A New Phrase Or Re-applies An Old Epithet. The Thought Or Feeling A Thousand Times Repeated Becomes His At Last Who Utters It Best.

A Man Is Old When He Can Pass An Apple Orchard And Not Remember The Stomachache.

In The Gain Or Loss Of One Race All The Rest Have Equal Claim.

Ez Fer War, I Call It Murder,- There You Hev It Plain An' Flat; I Don't Want To Go No Furder Than My Testyment Fer That. . . . . . An' You 've Gut To Git Up Airly Ef You Want To Take In God.

Solitude Is As Needful To The Imagination As Society Is Wholesome For The Character.

Sorrow Is The Great Idealizer.

A Nature Wise With Finding In Itself The Types Of All, With Watching From The Dim Verge Of The Time What Things To Be Are Visible In The Gleams Thrown Forward On Them From The Luminous Past, Wise With The History Of Its Own Frail Heart, With Reverence And Sorrow, And With Love, Broad As The World, For Freedom And For Man.

So We're All Right, An' I, For One, Don't Think Our Cause'll Lose In Vally By Rammin' Scriptur' In Our Gun, An' Gittin' Natur' For An Ally.

Whom The Heart Of Man Shuts Out, Sometimes The Heart Of God Takes In, And Fences Them All Round About With Silence Mid The Worlds Loud Din.

With Every Anguish Of Our Earthly Part The Spirit's Sight Grows Clearer.

The Eye Is The Notebook Of The Poet.

Every Person Born Into This World Their Work Is Born With Them.

The Green Grass Floweth Like A Stream Into The Oceans's Blue.

Over All Life Broods Poesy, Like The Calm Blue Sky With Its Motherly, Rebuking Face. She Is The Great Reformer, And Where The Love Of Her Is Strong And Healthy, Wickedness And Wrong Cannot Long Prevail.

And The Choice Goes By Forever 'twixt That Darkness And That Light.

The Traitor To Humanity Is The Traitor Most Accursed; Man Is More Than Constitutions; Better Rot Beneath The Sod, Than Be True To Church And State While We Are Doubly False To God.

God Is The Only Being Who Has Time Enough; But A Prudent Man, Who Knows How To Seize Occasion, Can Commonly Make A Shift To Find As Much As He Needs.

The Thing We Long For, That We Are For One Transcendent Moment.

There Comes Emerson First, Whose Rich Words, Every One, Are Like Gold Nails In Temples To Hang Trophies On.

Before Man Made Us Citizens, Great Nature Made Us Men.

To Fail At All Is To Fail Utterly.

In All Literary History There Is No Such Figure As Dante, No Such Homogeneousness Of Life And Works, Such Loyalty To Ideas, Such Sublime Irrecognition Of The Unessential.

All Thoughtful Men Are Solitary And Original In Themselves.

The Course Of A Great Statesman Resembles That Of Navigable Rivers, Avoiding Immovable Obstacles With Noble Bends Of Concession, Seeking The Broad Levels Of Opinion On Which Men Soonest Settle And Longest Dwell, Following And Marking The Almost Imperceptible Slopes Of National Tendency, Yet Always Aiming At Direct Advances, Always Recruited From Sources Nearer Heaven, And Sometimes Bursting Open Paths Of Progress And Fruitful Human Commerce Through What Seem The Eternal Barriers Of Both.

The Realm Of Death Seems An Enemy's Country To Most Men, On Whose Shores They Are Loathly Driven By Stress Of Weather; To The Wise Man It Is The Desired Port Where He Moors His Bark Gladly, As In Some Quiet Haven Of The Fortunate Isles; It Is The Golden West Into Which His Sun Sinks, And, Sinking, Casts Back A Glory Upon The Leaden Cloud-tack Which Had Darkly Besieged His Day.

Fools, When Their Roof-tree Falls, Think It Doomsday.

We Look At Death Through The Cheap-glazed Windows Of The Flesh, And Believe Him The Monster Which The Flawed And Cracked Glass Represents Him.

To Win The Secret Of A Weed's Plain Heart.

In Life's Small Things Be Resolute And Great To Keep Thy Muscle Trained; Know'st Thou When Fate Thy Measure Takes, Or When She'll Say To Thee, "i Find Thee Worthy; Do This Deed For Me?"

The Better Part Of Every Man's Education Is That Which He Gives Himself.

Humbleness Is Always Grace; Always Dignity

There Is Only One Thing Better Than Tradition And That Is The Original And Eternal Life Out Of Which All Tradition Takes Its Rise.

A Wise Skepticism Is The First Attribute Of A Good Critic.

Democracy Gives Every Man The Right To Be His Own Oppressor.

Democracies Have

It Is Curious How Tyrannical The Habit Of Reading Is, And What Shifts We Make To Escape Thinking. There Is No Bore We Dread Being Left Alone With So Much As Our Own Minds.

What A Man Pays For Bread And Butter Is Worth Its Market Value, And No More. What He Pays For Love's Sake Is Gold Indeed, Which Has A Lure For Angels' Eyes, And Rings Well Upon God's Touchstone.

A Marciful Providunce Fashioned Us Holler O' Purpose Thet We Might Our Principles Swaller.

The Material Of Thought Re-acts Upon The Thought Itself.

Each Day The World Is Born Anew For Him Who Takes It Rightly.

In The Earliest Ages Science Was Poetry, As In The Later Poetry Has Become Science.

They Are Slaves Who Fear To Speak, For The Fallen And The Weak.

It Is Only The Intellect That Can Be Thoroughly And Hideously Wicked. It Can Forget Everything In The Attainment Of Its Ends. The Heart Recoils; In Its Retired Some Drops Of Childhood's Dew Still Linger, Defying Manhood's Fiery Noon.

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