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Meantime The Education Of The General Mind Never Stops. The Reveries Of The True And Simple Are Prophetic. What The Tender Poeticyouth Dreams, And Prays, And Paints Today, But Shuns The Ridicule Of Saying Aloud, Shall Presently Be The Resolutions Of Public Bodies, Then Shall Be Carried As Grievance And Bill Of Rights Through Conflict And War, And Then Shall Be Triumphant Law And Establishment For A Hundred Years, Until It Gives Place, In Turn, To New Prayers And Pictures.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Meantime The Education Of

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Meantime The Education Of The General Mind Never Stops. The Reveries Of The True And Simple Are Prophetic. What The Tender Poeticyouth Dreams, And Prays, And Paints Today, But Shuns The Ridicule Of Saying Aloud, Shall Presently Be The Resolutions Of Public Bodies, Then Shall Be Carried As Grievance And Bill Of Rights Through Conflict And War, And Then Shall Be Triumphant Law And Establishment For A Hundred Years, Until It Gives Place, In Turn, To New Prayers And Pictures.

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Society Cannot Do Without Cultivated Men. As Soon As The First Wants Are Satisfied, The Higher Wants Become Imperative.

The Reliance On Authority Measures The Decline Of Religion, The Withdrawal Of The Soul.

The Greatest Delight The Fields And Woods Minister Is The Suggestion Of An Occult Relation Between Man And The Vegetable. I Am Not Alone And Unacknowledged. They Nod To Me And I To Them.

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.

Fate Is Nothing But The Deeds Committed In A Prior State Of Existence.

Is The Acorn Better Than The Oak Which Is Its Fullness And Completion?

Do Not Shut Up The Young People Against Their Will In A Pew, And Force The Children To Ask Them Questions For An Hour Against Their Will.

In Our Mechanics' Fair, There Must Be Not Only Bridges, Ploughs, Carpenter's Planes, And Baking Troughs, But Also Some Few Finer Instruments,--rain-gauges, Thermometers, And Telescopes; And In Society, Besides Farmers, Sailors, And Weavers, There Must Be A Few Persons Of Purer Fire Kept Specially As Gauges And Meters Of Character; Persons Of A Fine, Detecting Instinct, Who Note The Smallest Accumulations Of Wit And Feeling In The Bystander.

But, If We Explore The Literature Of Heroism, We Shall Quickly Come To Plutarch, Who Is Its Doctor And Historian. To Him We Owe The Brasidas, The Dion, The Epaminodas, The Scipio Of Old, And I Must Think We Are More Deeply Indebted To Him Than To All The Ancient Writers. Each Of His "lives" Is A Refutation To The Despondency And Cowardice Of Our Religious And Political Theorists. A Wild Courage, A Stoicism Not Of The Schools, But Of The Blood, Shines In Every Anecdote, And Had Given That Book Immense Fame.

For Every Grain Of Wit There Is A Grain Of Folly.

The Soul Lets No Man Go Without Some Visitations And Holy-days Of A Diviner Presence.

A Person Seldom Falls Sick But The Bystanders Are Animated With A Faint Hope That He Will Die.

Don't Be A Cynic, And Bewail And Bemoan. Omit The Negative Propositions. Don't Waste Yourself In Rejection, Nor Bark Against The Bad, But Chant The Beauty Of The Good. Set Down Nothing That Will Help Somebody.

Earth Laughs In Flowers.

Language Is A City, To The Building Of Which Every Human Being Brought A Stone; Yet He Is No More To Be Credited With The Grand Result Than The Acaleph Which Adds A Cell To The Coral Reef Which Is The Basis Of The Continent.

The First In Time And The First In Importance Of The Influences Upon The Mind Is That Of Nature. Every Day, The Sun; And After Sunset, Night And Her Stars. Ever The Winds Blow; Ever The Grass Grows.

War, To Sane Men At The Present Day, Begins To Look Like An Epidemic Insanity, Breaking Out Here And There Like The Cholera Or Influenza, Infecting Men's Brains Instead Of Their Bowels.

A Man In Debt Is So Far A Slave.

A Right Rule For A Club Would Be,-admit No Man Whose Presence Excludes Any One Topic.

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

No Man Has A Right Perception Of Any Truth, Who Has Not Been Reacted On By It, So As To Be Ready To Be Its Martyr.

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

To Me, However, The Question Of The Times Resolved Itself Into A Practical Question Of The Conduct Of Life. How Shall I Live? We Are Incompetent To Solve The Times. Our Geometry Cannot Span The Huge Orbits Of The Prevailing Ideas, Behold Their Return, And Reconcile Their Opposition. We Can Only Obey Our Own Polarity.

I Do Not Wish To Please Him; I Wish That He Should Wish To Please Me.

He Is A Good Man, Who Can Receive A Gift Well. We Are Either Glad Or Sorry At A Gift, And Both Emotions Are Unbecoming.

Science Is Nothing But The Finding Of Analogy, Identity, In The Most Remote Parts.

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

There Comes A Time In Each Man's Education In Which He Comes To The Conclusion That Envy Is Ignorance, Imitation Is Suicide, And Society In In Conspiracy Against Each One Of Its Members.

The Age Of A Woman Doesn't Mean A Thing. The Best Tunes Are Played On The Oldest Fiddles.

Many Times The Reading Of A Book Has Made The Future Of A Man.

I Like The Silent Church Before The Service Begins, Better Than Any Preaching. How Far Off, How Cool, How Chaste The Persons Look,begirt Each One With A Precinct Or Sanctuary!

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

What Is A Weed? A Plant Whose Virtues Have Never Been Discovered.

Every Friend Whom Not Thy Fantastic Will But The Great And Tender Heart In Thee Craveth, Shall Lock Thee In His Embrace. And This Because The Heart In Thee Is The Heart Of All; Not A Valve, Not A Wall, Not An Intersection Is There Anywhere In Nature, But One Blood Rolls Uninterruptedly In Endless Circulation Through All Men, As The Water Of The Globe Is All One Sea, And, Truly Seen, Its Tide Is One.

Genial Manners Are Good, And Power Of Accommodation To Any Circumstance, But The High Prize Of Life, The Crowning Fortune Of A Man Is To Be Born With A Bias To Some Pursuit, Which Finds Him In Employment And Happiness, -- Whether It Be To Make Baskets, Or Broadswords, Or Canals, Or Statutes, Or Songs. I Doubt Not This Was The Meaning Of Socrates, When He Pronounced Artists The Only Truly Wise, As Being Actually, Not Apparently So.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Suffer No Fiction To Exist For Us; To Realize All That We Know; In The High Refinement Of Modern Life,in Arts, In Sciences, In Books, In Men, To Exact Good Faith, Reality, And A Purpose; And First, Last, Midst, And Without End, To Honor Every Truth By Use.

The Word Unto The Prophet Spoken Was Writ On Tablets Yet Unbroken: The Word By Seers Or Sibyls Told, In Groves Of Oak Or Fanes Of Gold, Still Floats Upon The Morning Wind, Still Whispers To The Willing Mind.

To Accomplish Excellence Or Anything Outstanding, You Must Listen To That Whisper Which Is Heard By You Alone.

We Are Sure That, Though We Know Not How, Necessity Does Comport With Liberty, The Individual With The World, My Polarity With Thespirit Of The Times. The Riddle Of The Age Has For Each A Private Solution.

I Am Defeated All The Time, Yet To Victory I Am Born.

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.

The Power Men Possess To Annoy Me I Give Them By A Weak Curiosity

A Hero Is A Man Who Is Afraid To Run Away.

Knowledge Exists To Be Imparted.

Always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.

There Comes A Period Of The Imagination To Each--a Later Youth--the Power Of Beauty, The Power Of Looks, Of Poetry.

Never Lose An Opportunity To See Anything That Is Beautiful. It Is God's Handwriting A Wayside Sacrament. Welcome It In Every Fair Face, Every Fair Sky, Every Fair Flower.

If We Will Not Interfere With Our Thought, But Will Act Entirely, Or See How The Thing Stands In God, We Know The Particular Thing, And Every Thing, And Every Man.

Women Stand Related To Beautiful Nature Around Us, And The Enamoured Youth Mixes Their Form With Moon And Stars, With Woods And Waters, And The Pomp Of Summer. They Heal Us Of Awkwardness By Their Words And Looks. We Observe Their Intellectual Influence On The Most Serious Student. They Refine And Clear His Mind: Teach Him To Put A Pleasing Method Into What Is Dry And Difficult.

If The Individuals Who Compose The Purest Circles Of Aristocracy In Europe, The Guarded Blood Of Centuries, Should Pass In Review,in Such Manner As That We Could, At Leisure, And Critically Inspect Their Behavior, We Might Find No Gentleman, And No Lady; For, Although Excellent Specimens Of Courtesy And High-breeding Would Gratify Us In The Assemblage, In The Particulars, We Should Detect Offence. Because, Elegance Comes Of No Breeding, But Of Birth.

Each Moment Of The Year Has Its Own Beauty.

The Masses Have No Habit Of Self-reliance Or Original Action.

Every Word Which Is Used To Express A Moral Or Intellectual Fact, If Traced To Its Root, Is Found To Be Borrowed From Some Material Appearance.

A Sage Is The Instructor Of A Hundred Ages.

Exaggeration Is In The Course Of Things. Nature Sends No Creature, No Man Into The World, Without Adding A Small Excess Of His Proper Quality. Given The Planet, It Is Still Necessary To Add The Impulse; So, To Every Creature Nature Added A Little Violence Of Direction In Its Proper Path, A Shove To Put It On Its Way; In Every Instance, A Slight Generosity, A Drop Too Much.

Exaggeration Is

The Highest Revelation Is That God Is In Every Man.

A Right Rule For A Club Would Be, Admit No Man Whose Presence Excludes Any One Topic. It Requires People Who Are Not Surprised Andshocked, Who Do And Let Do, And Let Be, Who Sink Trifles, And Know Solid Values, And Who Take A Great Deal For Granted.

All Minds Quote. Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands. By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. We Quote Not Only Books And Proverbs, But Arts, Sciences, Religion, Customs, And Laws; Nay, We Quote Temples And Houses, Tables And Chairs, By Imitation.

In Every Company, There Is Not Only The Active And Passive Sex, But, In Both Men And Women, A Deeper And More Important Sex Of Mind, Namely, The Inventive Or Creative Class Of Both Men And Women, And The Uninventive Or Accepting Class.

Men Such As They Are, Very Naturally Seek Money Or Power; And Power Because It Is As Good As Money.

When It Is Darkest, We Can See The Stars.

Suicide Inspirational

Jesus Christ Belonged To The True Race Of The Prophets. He Saw With An Open Eye The Mystery Of The Soul. . Alone In All History He Estimated The Greatness Of Man.

No Society Can Ever Be So Large As One Man.

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

In Talking With Scholars, I Observe That They Lost On Ruder Companions Those Years Of Boyhood Which Alone Could Give Imaginative Literature A Religious And Infinite Quality In Their Esteem.

In Imitation Is A Bit Suicide.

We Live In A Very Low State Of The World, And Pay Unwilling Tribute To Government Founded On Force. There Is Not, Among The Most Religious And Instructed Men Of The Most Religious And Civil Nations, A Reliance On The Moral Sentiment, And A Sufficient Belief In The Unity Of Things To Persuade Them That Society Can Be Maintained Without Artificial Restraints, As Well As The Solar System; Or That The Private Citizen Might Be Reasonable, And A Good Neighbor, Without The Hint Of A Jail Or A Confiscation.

An Artist Spends Himself Like The Crayon In His Hand, Till He Is All Gone.

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

Genius Is Saying What Is In Your Heart, Because It's In Everyone's Heart.

Solitude, The Safeguard Of Mediocrity, Is To Genius, The Stern Friend, The Cold, Obscure Shelter Where Moult The Wings Which Will Bear It Farther Than Suns And Stars.

He Who Has A Thousand Friends Has Not A Friend To Spare, While He Who Has One Enemy Shall Meet Him Everywhere.

Love Is The Essence Of God.

The Customer Is The Immediate Jewel Of Our Souls. Him We Flatter, Him We Feast, Compliment, Vote For, And Will Not Contradict.

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.

Away With This Hurrah Of Masses, And Let Us Have The Considerate Vote Of Single Men.

There Is A Time In Every Man's Education When He Arrives At The Conviction That Envy Is Ignorance; That Imitation Is Suicide; That He Must Take Himself For Better, For Worse, As His Portion; That Though The Wide Universe Is Full Of Good, No Kernel Of Nourishing Corn Can Come To Him But Through His Toil Bestowed On That Plot Of Ground Which Is Given To Him To Till. The Power Which Resides In Him Is New In Nature, And None But He Knows What That Is Which He Can Do, Nor Does He Know Until He Has Tried.

The Power Which Resides In Him Is New In Nature, And None But He Knows What That Is Which He Can Do, Nor Does He Know Until He Has Tried.

Everything Is Made Of One Hidden Stuff.

Earth And Nature

If A Man Is At Heart Just, Then In So Far Is He God; The Safety Of God, The Immortality Of God, The Majesty Of God Do Enter Into That Man With Justice.

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

Men Are Respectable Only As They Respect.

It Is The Quality Of The Moment, Not The Number Of Days, Or Events, Or Of Actors, That Imports.

For Everything You Gain, You Lose Something.

Missing Someone

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

Heaven Often Protects Valuable Souls Charged With Great Secrets, Great Ideas, By Long Shutting Them Up With Their Own Thoughts.

'tis A Good Rule In Every Journey To Provide Some Piece Of Liberal Study To Rescue The Hours Which Bad Weather, Bad Company, And Taverns Steal From The Best Economist.

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.

Astrology Is Astronomy Brought Down To Earth And Applied Toward The Affairs Of Men.

It Has Been The Office Of Art To Educate The Perception Of Beauty. We Are Immersed In Beauty But Our Eyes Have No Clear Vision.

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

Focus And Concentration

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.

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.

On The Other Side, The Conservative Party, Composed Of The Most Moderate, Able, And Cultivated Part Of The Population, Is Timid, And Merely Defensive Of Property. It Vindicates No Right, It Aspires To No Real Good, It Brands No Crime, It Proposes No Generous Policy, It Does Not Build, Nor Write, Nor Cherish The Arts, Nor Foster Religion, Nor Establish Schools, Nor Encourage Science, Nor Emancipate The Slave, Nor Befriend The Poor, Or The Indian, Or The Immigrant.

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

The Greatest Genius Is The Most Indebted Person.

Nature Is Saturated With Deity.

To Believe In Luck ... Is Skepticism.

Every Great Achievement Is The Victory Of A Flaming Heart.

Literature Is The Effort Of Man To Indemnify Himself For The Wrongs Of His Condition.

The True Thrift Is Always To Spend On The Higher Plane; To Invest And Invest, With Keener Avarice, That He May Spend In Spiritualcreation, And Not In Augmenting Animal Existence. Nor Is The Man Enriched, In Repeating The Old Experiments Of Animal Sensation; Nor Unless Through New Powers And Ascending Pleasures He Knows Himself By The Actual Experience Of Higher Good To Be Already On The Way To The Highest.

The Wise And Just Man Will Always Feel That He Stands On His Own Feet; That He Imparts Strength To The State, Not Receives Security From It; And If All Went Down, He And Such As He Would Quite Easily Combine In A New And Better Constitution.

It Is Always So Pleasant To Be Generous, Though Very Vexatious To Pay Debts.

I Think It Is The Best Of Humanity That Goes Out To Walk. In Happy Hours, I Think All Affairs May Be Wisely Postponed For Walking.

Nothing Is More Simple Than Greatness; Indeed, To Be Simple Is To Be Great.

Foolish Consistencies Are The Hobgoblins Of Small Minds!

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

It Was High Counsel That I Once Heard Given To A Young Person, 'always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.'

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

Inaction Is Cowardice, But There Can Be No Scholar Without The Heroic Mind.

The Best Conversation Is Rare. Society Seems To Have Agreed To Treat Fictions As Realities, And Realities As Fictions; And The Simple Lover Of Truth, Especially If On Very High Grounds, As A Religious Or Intellectual Seeker, Finds Himself A Stranger And Alien.

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.

The Way To Mend The Bad World Is To Create The Right World.

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.

We Are Adapted To Infinity. We Are Hard To Please, And Love Nothing Which Ends: And In Nature Is No End; But Every Thing, At The End Of One Use, Is Lifted Into A Superior, And The Ascent Of These Things Climbs Into Daemonic And Celestial Natures.

Every Noble Activity Makes Room For Itself.

Books Are The Best Of Things If Well Used; If Abused, Among The Worst. They Are Good For Nothing But To Inspire. I Had Better Never See A Book Than Be Warped By Its Attraction Clean Out Of My Own Orbit, And Made A Satellite Instead Of A System.

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

The Secret Of The Illusoriness Is In The Necessity Of A Succession Of Moods Or Objects. Gladly We Would Anchor, But The Anchorageis Quicksand.

America Means Opportunity, Freedom, Power.

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

Nature May Be As Selfishly Studied As Trade. Astronomy To The Selfish Becomes Astrology; Psychology, Mesmerism (with Intent To Show Where Aour Spoons Are Gone); And Anatomy And Physiology Become Phrenology And Palmistry.

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

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.

You Shall Have Joy, Or You Shall Have Power, Said God; You Shall Not Have Both.

Life Is A Festival Only To The Wise.

We Are All Wise For Other People, None For Himself.

'well,' Said Red Jacket [to Someone Complaining That He Had Not Enough Time], 'i Suppose You Have All There Is.'

He Presents Me With What Is Always An Acceptable Gift Who Brings Me News Of A Great Thought Before Unknown. He Enriches Me Without Impoverishing Himself.

The Whole Of Heraldry And Of Chivalry Is In Courtesy. A Man Of Fine Manners Shall Pronounce Your Name With All The Ornament That Titles Of Nobility Could Ever Add.

Only Those Books Come Down Which Deserve To Last . All The Gilt Edges, Vellum And Morocco, All The Presentation Copies To All The Libraries Will Not Preserve A Book In Circulation Beyond Its Intrinsic Date.

Tis Weak And Vicious People Who Cast The Blame On Fate. The Right Use Of Fate Is To Bring Up Our Conduct To The Loftiness Of Nature.

The Exercise Of All The Senses Is As Intense Pleasure, As Anyone Will Find, Who Recovers The Use Of One After Being Deprived Of It.

Men Imagine That They Communicate Their Virtue Or Vice Only By Overt Actions, And Do Not See That Virtue Or Vice Emit A Breath Every Moment.

Such Is The Active Power Of Good Temperament! Great Sweetness Of Temper Neutralizes Such Vast Amounts Of Acid.

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

We Fly To Beauty As An Asylum From The Terrors Of Finite Nature.

Whatever Is Old Corrupts, And The Past Turns To Snakes.

If You Put A Chain Around The Neck Of A Slave, The Other End Fastens Itself Around Your Own.

All Successful Men Have Agreed In One Thing -- They Were Causationists. They Believed That Things Went Not By Luck, But By Law; That There Was Not A Weak Or A Cracked Link In The Chain That Joins The First And Last Of Things.

All Men Are Poets At Heart.

A Dilettantism In Nature Is Barren And Unworthy. A Fop Of Fields Is No Better Than His Brother On Broadway.

The Work Of Vegetation Begins First In The Irritability Of The Bark And Leaf-buds.

The Best Political Economy Is The Care And Culture Of Men; For, In These Crises, All Are Ruined Except Such As Are Proper Individuals, Capable Of Thought, And Of New Choice And The Application Of Their Talent To New Labor.

The Sentence Must Also Contain Its Own Apology For Being Spoken.

Good Breeding, A Union Of Kindness And Independence.

In A Virtuous Action, I Properly Am; In A Virtuous Act, I Add To The World; I Plant Into Deserts Conquered From Chaos And Nothing, And See The Darkness Receding On The Limits Of The Horizon.

Nature Is An Endless Combination And Repetition Of A Very Few Laws. She Hums The Old Well-known Air Through Innumerable Variations.

The Essence Of All Jokes, Of All Comedy, Seems To Be An Honest Or Well Intended Halfness; A Non Performance Of That Which Is Pretended To Be Performed, At The Same Time That One Is Giving Loud Pledges Of Performance. The Balking Of The Intellect, Is Comedy And It Announces Itself In The Pleasant Spasms We Call Laughter.

Each Man Has His Own Vocation; His Talent Is His Call. There Is One Direction In Which All Space Is Open To Him.

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

One Of The Most Wonderful Things In Nature Is A Glance Of The Eye; It Transcends Speech; It Is The Bodily Symbol Of Identity.

I Like Man, But Not Men.

Tobacco, Coffee, Alcohol, Hashish, Prussic Acid, Strychnine, Are Weak Dilutions; The Surest Poison Is Time. This Cup Which Nature Puts To Our Lips, Has A Wonderful Virtue, Surpassing That Of Any Other Draught. It Opens The Senses, Adds Power, Fills Us With Exalted Dreams, Which We Call Hope, Love, Ambition, Science; Especially It Creates A Craving For Larger Draughts Of Itself.

This Body, Full Of Faults, Has Yet One Great Quality: Whatever It Encounters In This Temporal Life Depends Upon One's Actions.

Literature Is Eavesdropping.

The Only Thing Grief Has Taught Me Is To Know How Shallow It Is.

Music And Wine Are One.

All Conservatives Are Such From Personal Defects. They Have Been Effiminated By Position Of Nature, Born Halt And Blind, Through Luxury Of Their Parents, And Can Only, Like Invalids, Act On The Defensive.

Do What You're Afraid To Do.

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

A Man Is Relieved And Gay When He Has Put His Heart Into His Work And Done His Best; But What He Has Said Or Done Otherwise Shall Give Him No Peace.

A True Man Belongs To No Other Time Or Place, But Is The Center Of Things.

Life Is Too Short To Waste . . . 'twill Soon Be Dark; Up! Mind Thine Own Aim, And God Speed The Mark!

Every Evil To Which We Do Not Succumb Is A Benefactor.

Spoons And Skimmers You Can Be Undistinguishably Together; But Vases And Statues Require Each A Pedestal For Itself.

But What Help From These Fineries Or Pedantries? What Help From Thought? Life Is Not Dialectics. We, I Think, In These Times, Have Had Lessons Enough Of The Futility Of Criticism.

How Much Better When The Whole Land Is A Garden, And The People Have Grown Up In The Bowers Of A Paradise.

Whoso Would Be A Man Must Be A Nonconformist.

Being Different

The Disease With Which The Human Mind Now Labors Is Want Of Faith

The Lover Of Nature Is He Whose Inward And Outward Senses Are Still Truly Adjusted To Each Other; Who Has Retained The Spirit Of Infancy Even Into The Era Of Manhood. His Intercourse With Heaven And Earth, Becomes Part Of His Daily Food. In The Presence Of Nature, A Wild Delight Runs Through The Man, In Spite Of Real Sorrows.

A Gothic Cathedral Affirms That It Was Done By Us And Not Done By Us.

If A Man Lose His Balance, And Immerse Himself In Any Trades Or Pleasures For Their Own Sake, He May Be A Good Wheel Or Pin, But He Is Not A Cultivated Man.

The Cities Drain The Country Of The Best Part Of Its Population: The Flower Of The Youth, Of Both Sexes, Goes Into The Towns, Andthe Country Is Cultivated By A So Much Inferior Class. The Land,--travel A Whole Day Together,--looks Poverty-stricken, And The Buildings Plain And Poor.

A Beautiful Behavior Is Better Than A Beautiful Form; It Gives A Higher Pleasure Than Statues Or Pictures; It Is The Finest Of Fine Arts.

Daughter Of Heaven And Earth, Coy Spring, With Sudden Passion Languishing, Teaching Barren Moors To Smile, Painting Pictures Mile On Mile, Holds A Cup Of Cowslip Wreaths Whence A Smokeless Incense Breathes.

God Has Delegated Himself To A Million Deputies.

Test Of The Poet Is Knowledge Of Love, For Eros Is Older Than Saturn Or Jove; Never Was Poet, Of Late Or Of Yore, Who Was Not Tremulous With Love-lore.

What We Love That We Have, But By Desire We Bereave Ourselves Of The Love.

God Made Yeast, As Well As Dough, And Loves Fermentation Just As Dearly As He Loves Vegetation.

It Is God In You That Responds To God Without, Or Affirms His Own Words Trembling On The Lips Of Another.

He Cannot Be Happy And Strong Until He Too Lives With Nature In The Present, Above Time.

As The Eye Is The Best Composer, So Light Is The First Of Painters. There Is No Object So Foul That Intense Light Will Not Make Beautiful; And The Stimulus It Affords To The Sense, And A Sort Of Infinitude Which It Hath Like Space And Time, Make All Matter Gay.

Eyes Are Bold As Lions,--roving, Running, Leaping, Here And There, Far And Near. They Speak All Languages. They Wait For No Introduction; They Are No Englishmen; Ask No Leave Of Age Or Rank; They Respect Neither Property Nor Riches, Neither Learning Nor Power, Nor Virtue, Nor Sex, But Intrude, And Come Again, And Go Through And Through You In A Moment Of Time. What Inundation Of Life And Thought Is Discharged From One Soul Into Another Through Them!

Life Itself Is ... A Sleep Within A Sleep.

If The Black Man Is Feeble And Not Important To The Existing Races, Not On A Parity With The Best Race, The Black Man Must Serve,and Be Exterminated. But If The Black Man Carries In His Bosom An Indispensable Element Of A New And Coming Civilization; For The Sake Of That Element, No Wrong Nor Strength Nor Circumstance Can Hurt Him: He Will Survive And Play His Part. So Now, The Arrival In The World Of Such Men As Toussaint, And The Haytian Heroes, Or Of The Leaders Of Their Race In Barbadoes And Jamaica, Outweighs In Good Omen All The English And American Humanity.

The End Of Being Is To Know; And If You Say, The End Of Knowledge Is Action,-why, Yes, But The End Of That Action Again, Is Knowledge.

Pride Can Go Without Domestics, Without Fine Clothes, Can Live In A House With Two Rooms, Can Eat Potato, Purslain, Beans, Lyed Corn, Can Work On The Soil, Can Travel Afoot, Can Talk With Poor Men, Or Sit Silent Well Contented With Fine Saloons. But Vanity Costs Money, Labor, Horses, Men, Women, Health And Peace, And Is Still Nothing At Last; A Long Way Leading Nowhere.--only One Drawback; Proud People Are Intolerably Selfish, And The Vain Are Gentle And Giving.

Sorrow Looks Back, Worry Looks Around, Faith Looks Up

Spartans, Stoics, Heroes, Saints And Gods Use Short And Positive Speech.

We Mark With Light In The Memory The Few Interviews We Have Had With Souls That Made Our Souls Wiser, That Spoke What We Thought, That Told Us What We Knew, That Gave Us Leave To Be What We Inly Are.

Another Success Is The Post-office, With Its Educating Energy Augmented By Cheapness And Guarded By A Certain Religious Sentimentin Mankind; So That The Power Of A Wafer Or A Drop Of Wax Or Gluten To Guard A Letter, As It Flies Over Sea Over Land And Comes To Its Address As If A Battalion Of Artillery Brought It, I Look Upon As A Fine Meter Of Civilization.

Logic Is The Procession Or Proportionate Unfolding Of The Intuition; But Its Virtue Is As Silent Method; The Moment It Would Appear As Propositions, And Have A Separate Value, It Is Worthless.

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.

To A Physician, Each Man, Each Woman, Is An Amplification Of One Organ.

Savages Cling To A Local God Of One Tribe Or Town. The Broad Ethics Of Jesus Were Quickly Narrowed To Village Theologies, Which Preach An Election Or Favoritism.

In Nature Nothing Can Be Given. All Things Are Sold.

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

Let Us Draw A Lesson From Nature, Which Always Works By Short Ways. When The Fruit Is Ripe, It Falls.

Most People, Who Have Quit Smoking, Have Had At Least One Unsuccessful Try In The Past. It Is Not Important How Many Times You Try To Quit. The Only Important Thing Is, That Eventually You Stay Quit

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