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Men Do Not Believe In The Power Of Education. We Do Not Think We Can Speak To Divine Sentiments In Man, And We Do Not Try. We Renounce All High Aims.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men Do Not Believe

Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men Do Not Believe In The Power Of Education. We Do Not Think We Can Speak To Divine Sentiments In Man, And We Do Not Try. We Renounce All High Aims.

Understanding the Quote: "men do not believe in the power of education. we do not..."

This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects deeply on the theme of education. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Education, Believe, Men, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Ralph Waldo Emerson interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson is celebrated for insightful thoughts on education and believe. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Education
Believe
Men
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Man Was Born To Be Rich, Or Grow Rich By Use Of His Faculties, By The Union Of Thought With Nature. Property Is An Intellectual Production. The Game Requires Coolness, Right Reasoning, Promptness, And Patience In The Players.
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Yet Time And Space Are But Inverse Measures Of The Force Of The Soul. The Spirit Sports With Time.
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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.
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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.
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Let Us Not Forget The Genial Miraculous Force We Have Known To Proceed From A Book.
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There Can Be No High Civility Without A Deep Morality, Though It May Not Always Call Itself By That Name.
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For It Is Not Metres, But A Metre-making Argument That Makes A Poem.
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We Are Always Getting Ready To Live, But Never Living... The Wave Moves Onward But The Particles Of Which It Is Composed Do Not... It Cannot Be But That At Intervals Throughout Society There Are Real Men Intermixed . . . As The Carpenter Puts One Iron Bar In His Bannister For Every Five Or Six Wooden Ones.
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There Is A Remedy For Every Wrong And A Satisfaction For Every Soul.
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Whatever It Is, It's Better In The Wind.
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Conservatism Makes No Poetry, Breathes No Prayer, Has No Invention; It Is All Memory. Reform Has No Gratitude, No Prudence, No Husbandry.
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I Could Better Eat With One Who Did Not Respect The Truth Or The Laws, Than With A Sloven And Unpresentable Person. Moral Qualities Rule The World, But At Shorter Distances, The Senses Are Despotic.
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Genius Is The Power To Labor Better And More Availably. Deserve Thy Genius: Exalt It.
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To A Physician, Each Man, Each Woman, Is An Amplification Of One Organ.
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In The Presence Of Nature, A Wild Delight Runs Through The Man, In Spite Of Real Sorrows.
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The Attraction And Superiority Of California Are In Its Days. It Has Better Days & More Of Them, Than Any Other Country.
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The Preamble Of Thought, The Transition Through Which It Passes From The Unconscious To The Conscious, Is Action. Only So Much Do I Know, As I Have Lived. Instantly We Know Whose Words Are Loaded With Life, And Whose Not.
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The Test Of Civilization Is The Power Of Drawing The Most Benefit Out Of Cities.
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It Is In Bad Taste," Is The Most Formidable Word An Englishman Can Pronounce.
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When Good Is Near You, When You Have Life In Yourself, It Is Not By Any Known Or Accustomed Way; You Shall Not Discern The Foot-prints Of Any Other; You Shall Not See The Face Of Man; You Shall Not Hear Any Name; The Way, The Thought, The Good, Shall Be Wholly Strange And New. It Shall Exclude Example And Experience.
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Experience Is The Only Teacher, And We Get His Lesson Indifferently In Any School.
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We Flee Away From Cities, But We Bring The Best Of Cities, These Learned Classifiers, Men Knowing What They Seek, Armed Eyes Of Experts.
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When A Man Becomes Cultivated, He Develops A New Respect For Who He Is. This Causes Him To Be Ashamed Of His Past Identification Of Himself And Others According To Things, I.e. Property.
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Every Natural Power Exhilarates; A True Talent Delights The Possessor First.
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The Rage For Road Building Is Beneficent For America, Where Vast Distance Is So Main A Consideration In Our Domestic Politics Andtrade, Inasmuch As The Great Political Promise Of The Invention Is To Hold The Union Staunch, Whose Days Already Seem Numbered By The Mere Inconvenience Of Transporting Representatives, Judges And Officers Across Such Tedious Distances Of Land And Water.
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The Nobler The Truth Or Sentiment, The Less Imports The Question Of Authorship.
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It In Every Fair Face, Every Fair Sky, Every Fair Flower.
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Live Well, Learn Plenty, Laugh Often, Love Much.
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All Public Facts Are To Be Individualized, All Private Facts Are To Be Generalized.
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Thought Makes Everything Fit For Use.
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The Reward Of A Thing Well Done, Is To Have Done It.
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I Remember An Answer Which When Quite Young I Was Prompted To Make A Valued Adviser Who Was Wont To Importune Me With The Dear Old Doctrines Of The Church. On My Saying, What Have I To Do With The Sacredness Of Traditions, If I Live Wholly From Within? My Friend Suggested, - "but These Impulses May Be From Below, Not From Above." I Replied, 'they Do Not Seem To Me To Be Such; But If I Am The Devil's Child, I Will Live Then From The Devil.'
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A Man's Style Is His Mind's Voice. Wooden Minds, Wooden Voices.
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Invention Breeds Invention. No Sooner Is The Electric Telegraph Devised Than Gutta-percha, The Very Material It Requires, Is Found. The Aeronaut Is Provided With Gun-cotton, The Very Fuel He Wants For His Balloon.
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Private, Accidental, Confidential Conversation Breeds Thought. Clubs Produce Oftener Words.
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The Best Nations Are Those Most Widely Related; And Navigation, As Effecting A World-wide Mixture, Is The Most Potent Advancer Ofnations.
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If You Would Know What Nobody Knows, Read What Everybody Reads, Just One Year Afterwards.
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A Feeble Man Can See The Farms That Are Fenced And Tilled, The Houses That Are Built. The Strong Man Sees The Possible Houses And Farms. His Eye Makes Estates As Fast As The Sun Breeds Clouds.
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The Borrowing Is Often Honest Enough, And Comes Of Magnanimity And Stoutness. A Great Man Quotes Bravely And Will Not Draw On His Invention When His Memory Serves Him With A Word As Good.
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The Question Is Whether [suicide] Is The Way Out, Or The Way In.
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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.
Teacher
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Keys
Nor Sequent Centuries Could Hit Orbit And Sum Of Shakspeare's Wit. The Men Who Lived With Him Became Poets, For The Air Was Fame.
Men
Air
Poetry
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The Laws Of Each Are Convertible Into The Laws Of Any Other.
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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.
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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.
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Men
Nature Has Made Up Her Mind That What Cannot Defend Itself Shall Not Be Defended.
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Made
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.
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Men
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Poets Should Be Law-givers; That Is, The Boldest Lyric Inspiration Should Not Chide And Insult, But Should Announce And Lead The Civil Code, And The Day's Work.
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Law
Insult
No Man Ever Came To An Experience Which Was Satiating, But His Good Is Tidings Of A Better. Onward And Onward!
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Speak As You Think, Be What You Are, Pay Your Debts Of All Kinds. I Prefer To Be Owned As Sound And Solvent, And My Word As Good As My Bond, And To Be What Cannot Be Skipped, Or Dissipated, Or Undermined, To All The Eclat In The Universe. This Reality Is The Foundation Of Friendship, Religion, Poetry, And Art.
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To Go Into Solitude, A Man Needs To Retire As Much From His Chamber As From Society. I Am Not Solitary Whilst I Read And Write, Though Nobody Is With Me. But If A Man Would Be Alone, Let Him Look At The Stars.
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Men
Every Man Alone Is Sincere. At The Entrance Of A Second Person, Hypocrisy Begins
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Men
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.
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A Man Is Usually More Careful Of His Money Than He Is Of His Principles.
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Men
Fear Always Springs From Ignorance.
Spiritual
Fear
Spring
I Now Require This Of All Pictures, That They Domesticate Me, Not That They Dazzle Me. Pictures Must Not Be Too Picturesque. Nothing Astonishes Men So Much As Common-sense And Plain Dealing. All Great Actions Have Been Simple, And All Great Pictures Are.
Art
Men
Simple
Where The Banana Grows Man Is Sensual And Cruel.
Men
Sensual
Bananas
A Strong Person Makes The Law And Custom Null Before His Own Will.
Strength
Strong
Law
Guard Well Your Spare Moments. They Are Like Uncut Diamonds. Discard Them And Their Value Will Never Be Known. Improve Them And They Will Become The Brightest Gems In A Useful Life.
Inspirational
Life
Time
Let Him Be Great, And Love Shall Follow Him.
Greatness
And Love
Levity
If Man Has Good Corn, Or Wood, Or Boards, Or Pigs To Sell, Or Can Make Better Chairs Or Knives, Crucibles, Or Church Organs, Than Anybody Else, You Will Find A Broad, Hard-beaten Road To His House, Though It Be In The Woods.
Success
Men
Pigs
Whatever You Do, You Need Courage. Whatever Course You Decide Upon, There Is Always Someone To Tell You That You Are Wrong.
Inspirational
Confidence
Wisdom
I Am Become A Transparent Eyeball.
Spiritual
Eyeballs
Transparent
Of All The Ways To Lose A Person, Death Is The Kindest
Way
Persons
Loses
There Is Nothing In History To Parallel The Influence Of Jesus Christ.
Jesus
Influence
Christ
If It Costs Ten Years, And Ten To Recover The General Prosperity, The Destruction Of The South Is Worth So Much.
War
Years
Cost
A Good Reader Makes A Good Book
Book
Good Book
Reader
All Men, In The Abstract, Are Just And Good; What Hinders Them, In The Particular, Is, The Momentary Predominance Of The Finite And Individual Over The General Truth. The Condition Of Our Incarnation In A Private Self, Seems To Be, A Perpetual Tendency To Prefer The Private Law, To Obey The Private Impulse, To The Exclusion Of The Law Of The Universal Being.
Men
Self
Law
The Difference Between Talent And Genius Is That Talent Says Things Which He Has Never Heard But Once, And Genius Things Which He Has Never Heard.
Differences
Genius
Talent
Power Is In Nature The Essential Measure Of Right.
Nature
Essentials
Only Be Admonished By What You Already See, Not To Strike Leagues Of Friendship With Cheap Persons, Where No Friendship Can Be. Our Impatience Betrays Us Into Rash And Foolish Alliances Which No God Attends.
Friendship
League
No Friends
But Only That Soul Can Be My Friend Which I Encounter On The Line Of My Own March, That Soul To Which I Do Not Decline, And Which Does Not Decline Me, But, Native Of The Same Celestial Latitude, Repeats In Its Own All My Experience.
Soul
Encounters
Doe
Art And Power Will Go On As They Have Done,--will Make Day Out Of Night, Time Out Of Space, And Space Out Of Time.
Art
Night
Destiny
Repose And Cheerfulness Is The Badge Of The Gentleman; Repose In Energy.
Character
Personality
Gentleman
The Soul Circumscribes All Things.
Soul
Oversoul
All Things
There Is Genius As Well In Virtue As In Intellect. 'tis The Doctrine Of Faith Over Works.
Doctrine
Genius
Virtue
In Our Fine Arts, Not Imitation, But Creation Is The Aim... The Details, The Prose Of Nature, He Should Omit, And Give Us Only The Spirit And Splendour.
Art
Creativity
Giving
Government Exists To Defend The Weak And The Poor And The Injured Party; The Rich And The Strong Can Better Take Care Of Themselves.
Strong
Party
Government
The Thing Done Avails, And Not What Is Said About It.
Done
Said
Things Done
Love Of Beauty Is Taste. The Creation Of Beauty Is Art.
Love
Beauty
Art
The Same, The Same: Friend And Foe Are Of One Stuff; The Ploughman, The Plough, And The Furrow, Are Of One Stuff; And The Stuff Is Such, And So Much, That The Variations Of Form Are Unimportant.
Variation
Stuff
Form
The Pest Of Society Is Egotists.
Pests
Egotism
I Knew A Witty Physician Who Found Theology In The Biliary Duct, And Used To Affirm That If There Was A Disease In The Liver, The Man Became A Calvinist, And If That Organ Was Sound, He Became A Unitarian.
Witty
Men
Disease
We Must Not Tamper With The Organic Motion Of The Soul.
Soul
The Only Right Is What Is After My Constitution; The Only Wrong Is What Is Against It.
Self Reliance
Constitution
Reliance
The Have A Good Friend Is One Of The Greatest Delights Of Life.
Good Friend
Delight
I Am Old, Yet I Look At Wise Men And See That I Am Very Young. I Look Over Those Stars Yonder, And Into The Myriads Of The Aspirant And Ordered Souls, And See I Am A Stranger And A Youth And Have Yet My Spurs To Win. Too Ridiculous Are These Airs Of Age.
Wise
Stars
Winning
An Institution Is The Lengthened Shadow Of One Man.
Men
Self Reliance
Shadow
We Do Not Count A Man's Years Until He Has Nothing Else To Count.
Birthday
Time
Men
People Destined To Meet Will Do So, Apparently By Chance, At Precisely The Right Moment.
People
Chance
Moments
As Soon As A Child Has Left The Room His Strewn Toys Become Affecting.
Children
Rooms
Toys
I Do Not Know What Arguments Mean In Reference To Any Expression Of A Thought. I Delight In Telling What I Think; But If You Ask Me How I Dare Say So, Or Why It Is So, I Am The Most Helpless Of Men.
Mean
Men
Thinking
It Is Commonly Said By Farmers, That A Good Pear Or Apple Costs No More Time Or Pains To Rear, Than A Poor One; So I Would Have No Work Of Art, No Speech, Or Action, Or Thought, Or Friend, But The Best.
Art
Pain
Apples
If I Cannot Brag Of Knowing Something, Then I Brag Of Not Knowing It; At Any Rate, Brag.
Science
Knowing
Bragging
Nature Is A Tropical Swamp In Sunshine, On Whose Purlieus We Hear The Song Of Summer Birds, And See Prismatic Dewdrops, - But Her Interiors Are Terrific, Full Of Hydras And Crocodiles.
Summer
Song
Nature
I Will No Longer Confer, Differ, Refer, Defer, Prefer, Or Suffer. I Renounce The Whole Tribe Of Fero. I Embrace Absolute Life.
Thinking
Suffering
Tribes
Heaven Often Protects Valuable Souls Charged With Great Secrets, Great Ideas, By Long Shutting Them Up With Their Own Thoughts.
Ideas
Long
Heaven
Every Man Is The Inlet And May Become The Outlet Of All There Is In God.
Men
May
Outlets
The Crime Which Bankrupts Men And States Is Job-work-declining From Your Main Design, To Serve A Turn Here And There. Nothing Is Beneath You, If It Is In The Direction Of Your Life, Nothing Is Great Or Desirable If It Is Off From That. I Think We Are Entitled Here To Draw A Straight Line And Say That Society Can Never Prosper But Must Always Be Bankrupts, Until Every Man Does That Which He Was Created To Do.
Jobs
Men
Thinking
Dare To Love God Without Mediator Or Veil.
God
Veils
Dare
Meek Young Men Grow Up In Libraries, Believing It Their Duty To Accept The Views Which Cicero, Which Locke, Which Bacon, Have Given, Forgetful That Cicero, Locke, And Bacon Were Only Young Men In Libraries, When They Wrote These Books.
Growing Up
Believe
Book
I Consider Theology To Be The Rhetoric Of Morals.
Moral
Rhetoric
Theology
If The Single Man Plant Himself Indomitably On His Instincts, And There Abide, The Huge World Will Come Round To Him.
Inspirational
Being Yourself
Character
Life Only Avails, Not The Having Lived.
Life
Life Changing
Inspire
One Lesson We Learn Early, That In Spite Of Seeming Difference, Men Are All Of One Pattern. We Readily Assume This With Our Mates, And Are Disappointed And Angry If We Find That We Are Premature, And That Their Watches Are Slower Than Ours. In Fact, The Only Sin Which We Never Forgive In Each Other Is Difference Of Opinion.
Men
Differences
Forgiving
By Persisting In Your Path, Though You Forfeit The Little, You Gain The Great.
Perseverance
Persistence
Littles
If Any Mention Was Made Of Homicide, Madness, Adultery, And Intolerable Tortures, We Would Let The Church-bells Ring Louder, The Church-organ Swell Its Peal And Drown The Hideous Sound. The Sugar They Raised Was Excellent: Nobody Tasted Blood In It.
Church Bells
Blood
Sound
The Times Are The Masquerade Of The Eternities; Trivial To The Dull, Tokens Of Noble And Majestic Agents To The Wise; The Receptacle In Which The Past Leaves Its History; The Quarry Out Of Which The Genius Of Today Is Building Up The Future.
Wise
Future
Past
Read Proudly--put The Duty Of Being Read Invariably On The Author. If He Is Not Read, Whose Fault Is It? I Am Quite Ready To Be Charmed, But I Shall Not Make-believe I Am Charmed.
Believe
Reading
Faults
The Craft With Which The World Is Made Runs Also Into The Mind And Character Of Men. No Man Is Quite Sane; Each Has A Vein Of Folly In His Composition, A Slight Determination Of Blood To The Head, To Make Sure Of Holding Him Hard To Some One Point Which Nature Has Taken To Heart.
Running
Determination
Taken
He In Whom The Love Of Repose Predominates Will Accept The First Creed, The First Philosophy, The First Political Party He Meets — Most Likely His Father's. He Gets Rest, Commodity, And Reputation; But He Shuts The Door Of Truth.
Father
Philosophy
Party
What Is The End Of Human Life? It Is Not, Believe Me, The Chief End Of Man That He Should Make A Fortune And Beget Children Whose End Is Likewise To Make A Fortune, But It Is, In Few Words, That He Should Explore Himself.
Children
Believe
Men
Convert Life Into Truth.
Life
Truth
Action
Go Out Of The House To See The Moon, And 't Is Mere Tinsel; It Will Not Please As When Its Light Shines Upon Your Necessary Journey. The Beauty That Shimmers In The Yellow Afternoons Of October, Who Could Ever Clutch It? Go Forth To Find It, And It Is Gone: 't Is Only A Mirage As You Look From The Windows Of Diligence.
Beauty
Knowledge
Moon
The Religion Of England Is Part Of Good-breeding. When You See On The Continent The Well-dressed Englishman Come Into His Ambassador's Chapel And Put His Face For Silent Prayer Into His Smooth-brushed Hat, You Cannot Help Feeling How Much National Pride Prays With Him, And The Religion Of A Gentleman.
Prayer
Pride
Feelings
We Do Not Make A World Of Our Own, But Fall Into Institutions Already Made, And Have To Accommodate Ourselves To Them To Be Useful At All.
Fall
World
Made
Not A Ray Is Dimmed, Not An Atom Worn; Nature's Oldest Force Is As Good As New.
Nature
Rays
Atoms
The Years Teach Much Which The Days Never Know.
Inspirational
Life
Wisdom
Good Judgment Comes From Experience, And A Lot Of That Comes From Bad Judgment. The One Thing In The World, Of Value, Is The Active Soul.
Soul
World
Judgment
Drive Out Nature With A Fork, She Comes Running Back.
Running
Nature
Science
He Only Is A Well-made Man Who Has A Good Determination. And The End Of Culture Is Not To Destroy This, God Forbid! But To Train Away All Impediment And Mixture And Leave Nothing But Pure Power.
Determination
Power
Men
The Crowning Fortune Of A Man Is To Be Born To Some Pursuit Which Finds Him Employment And Happiness, Whether It Be To Make Baskets, Or Broadswords, Or Canals, Or Statues, Or Songs.
Life
Positive
Happiness
A Man Is Known By The Books He Reads.
Book
Reading
Men
He Who Is In Love Is Wise And Is Becoming Wiser, Sees Newly Every Time He Looks At The Object Beloved, Drawing From It With His Eyes And His Mind Those Virtues Which It Possesses.
Love
Wise
Philosophy
Grow Angry Slowly - There's Plenty Of Time.
Time
Grows
Angry
A Character Is Like An Acrostic Or Alexandrian Stanza; - Read It Forward, Backward, Or Across, It Still Spells The Same Thing.
Character
Stills
Spells
I Must Feel Pride In My Friend's Accomplishments As If They Were Mine,--and A Property In His Virtues. I Feel As Warmly When He Ispraised, As The Lover When He Hears Applause Of His Engaged Maiden.
Friendship
Pride
Accomplishment
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