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Our Country, Customs, Laws, Our Ambitions, And Our Notions Of Fit And Fair-all These We Never Made; We Found Them Ready-made; We But Quote From Them. What Would Remain To Me If This Art Of Appropriation Were Derogatory To Genius? Every One Of My Writings Has Been Furnished To Me By A Thousand Different Persons, A Thousand Things; Wise And Foolish Have Brought Me, Without Suspecting It, The Offering Of Their Thoughts, Faculties, And Experience. My Work Is An Aggregation Of Beings Taken From The Whole Of Nature. It Bears The Name Of Goethe.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Our Country, Customs, Laws,

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Our Country, Customs, Laws, Our Ambitions, And Our Notions Of Fit And Fair-all These We Never Made; We Found Them Ready-made; We But Quote From Them. What Would Remain To Me If This Art Of Appropriation Were Derogatory To Genius? Every One Of My Writings Has Been Furnished To Me By A Thousand Different Persons, A Thousand Things; Wise And Foolish Have Brought Me, Without Suspecting It, The Offering Of Their Thoughts, Faculties, And Experience. My Work Is An Aggregation Of Beings Taken From The Whole Of Nature. It Bears The Name Of Goethe.

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Want Is A Growing Giant Whom The Coat Of Have Was Never Large Enough To Cover.

Every Mind Is Different; And The More It Is Unfolded, The More Pronounced Is That Difference.

A Third Felicity Of Age Is That It Has Found Expression. The Youth Suffers Not Only From Ungratified Desires, But From Powers Untried, And From A Picture In His Mind Of A Career Which Has As Yet No Outward Reality. He Is Tormented With The Want Of Correspondence Between Things And Thoughts.

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

Pride Eradicates All Vices But Itself.

Indeed The River Is A Perpetual Gala, And Boasts Each Month A New Ornament.

The First Lesson Of History Is That Evil Is Good.

Ah Fate, Cannot A Man Be Wise Without A Beard? East, West, From Beer To Dan, Say, Was It Never Heard That Wisdom Might In Youth Be Gotten, Or Wit Be Ripe Before 't Was Rotten?

If You Act, You Show Character; If You Sit Still, You Show It; If You Sleep You Show It.

It Is The Fault Of Our Rhetoric That We Cannot Strongly State One Fact Without Seeming To Belie Some Other.

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

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.

There Is No Privacy That Cannot Be Penetrated. No Secret Can Be Kept In The Civilized World. Society Is A Masked Ball Where Everyone Hides His Real Character, Then Reveals It By Hiding

So Each Man, Like Each Plant, Has His Parasites. A Strong, Astringent, Bilious Nature Has More Truculent Enemies Than The Slugs And Moths That Fret My Leaves. Such A One Has Curculios, Borers, Knife-worms; A Swindler Ate Him First, Then A Client, Then A Quack, Then Smooth, Plausible Gentlemen, Bitter And Selfish As Moloch.

Man Begins Life Helpless. The Babe Is In Paroxysms Of Fear The Moment Its Nurse Leaves It Alone, And It Comes So Slowly To Any Power Of Self-protection That Mothers Say The Salvation Of The Life And Health Of A Young Child Is A Perpetual Miracle.

Nature Turns All Malfaisance To Good.

The Most Active Lives Have So Much Routine As To Preclude Progress Almost Equally With The Most Inactive.

The Have A Good Friend Is One Of The Greatest Delights Of Life.

The Lover Is Made Happier By His Love Than The Object Of His Affection.

Isolation Must Precede True Society.

Enthusiasm Is The Engine Of Success.

Congratulations

Who Shall Forbid A Wise Skepticism, Seeing That There Is No Practical Question On Which Anything More Than An Approximate Solution Can Be Had?

Time Is Indeed The Theater And Seat Of Illusions; Nothing Is So Ductile And Elastic. The Mind Stretches An Hour To A Century, And Dwarfs An Age To An Hour.

Give Me Wine To Wash Me Clean Of The Weather-stains Of Cares

He Thought It Happier To Be Dead, To Die For Beauty, Than Live For Bread

If We Will Take The Good We Find, Asking No Questions, We Shall Have Heaping Measures. The Great Gifts Are Not Got By Analysis. Everything Good Is On The Highway. The Middle Region Of Our Being Is The Temperate Zone.

No Man Acquires Property Without Acquiring With It A Little Arithmetic Also.

Whatever We Think And Say Is Wonderfully Better For Our Spirits And Trust In Another Mouth.

The Men Who Come On The Stage At One Period Are All Found To Be Related To Each Other. Certain Ideas Are In The Air.

No Book Was Ever Written Down By Any But Itself.

If Men Would Avoid That General Language And General Manner In Which They Strive To Hide All That Is Peculiar, And Would Say Only What Was Uppermost In Their Own Minds, After Their Own Individual Manner, Every Man Would Be Interesting.

The Aid We Can Give Each Other Is Only Incidental, Lateral, And Sympathetic.

There Is Then Creative Reading As Well As Creative Writing. When The Mind Is Braced By Labor And Invention, The Page Of Whatever Book We Read Becomes Luminous With Manifold Allusion. Every Sentence Is Doubly Significant, And The Sense Of Our Author Is As Broad As The World.

By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. In Fact, It Is As Difficult To Appropriate The Thoughts Of Others As It Is To Invent.

Always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.

The Domestic Man, Who Loves No Music So Well As His Kitchen Clock, And The Airs Which The Logs Sing To Him As They Burn On The Hearth, Has Solaces Which Others Never Dream Of.

If You Believe In Fate, Believe In It, At Least, For Your Good.

A Determined Man, By His Very Attitude And The Tone Of His Voice, Puts A Stop To Defeat, And Begins To Conquer.

The Only Compensation Which War Offers For Its Manifold Mischiefs, Is In The Great Personal Qualities To Which It Gives Scope And Occasion.

Personal Qualities

In The Order Of Nature, We Cannot Render Benefits To Those From Whom We Receive Them, Or Only Seldom. But The Benefit We Receive Must Be Rendered Again, Line For Line, Deed For Deed, Cent For Cent, To Somebody. Beware Of Too Much Good Staying In Your Hand. It Will Fast Corrupt And Worm Worms. Pay It Away Quickly In Some Sort.

The Wise Man In The Storm Prays God Not For Safety From Danger But For Deliverance From Fear. It Is The Storm Within Which Endangers Him[,] Not The Storm Without.

A Wise Writer Will Feel That The Ends Of Study And Composition Are Best Answered By Announcing Undiscovered Regions Of Thought, And So Communicating, Through Hope, New Activity To The Torpid Spirit.

A Man Of Good Sense But Of Little Faith, Whose Compassion Seemed To Lead Him To Church As Often As He Went There, Said To Me; 'that He Liked To Have Concerts, And Fairs, And Churches, And Other Public Amusements Go On.

The Value Of A Dollar Is To Buy Just Things; A Dollar Goes On Increasing In Value With All The Genius And All The Virtue Of The World. A Dollar In A University Is Worth More Than A Dollar In A Jail; In A Temperate, Schooled, Law-abiding Community Than In Some Sink Of Crime, Where Dice, Knives, And Arsenic Are In Constant Play.

The Conservative Assumes Sickness As A Necessity, And His Social Frame Is A Hospital, His Total Legislation Is For The Present Distress, A Universe In Slippers And Flannels, With Bib And Papspoon, Swallowing Pills And Herb-tea.

The Lord Is The Peasant That Was, The Peasant Is The Lord That Shall Be.

Sometimes We Receive The Power To Say Yes To Life. Then Peace Enters Us And Makes Us Whole.

When A Man Speaks The Truth In The Spirit Of Truth, His Eye Is As Clear As The Heavens. When He Has Base Ends, And Speaks Falsely, The Eye Is Muddy, And Sometimes Asquint.

The Force Of Character Is Cumulative.

But There Are Higher Secrets Of Culture, Which Are Not For The Apprentices, But For Proficients. These Are Lessons Only For The Brave. We Must Know Our Friends Under Ugly Masks. The Calamities Are Our Friends.

The House ...she Lays Her Beams In Music, In Music Everyone, To The Cadence Of The Whirling World Which Dances Around The Sun- That So They Shall Not Be Displaced By Lapses Or By Wars, But For The Love Of Happy Souls Outlive The Newest Stars.

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.

I Honor Health As The First Muse, And Sleep As The Condition Of Health. Sleep Benefits Mainly By The Sound Health It Produces; Incidentally Also By Dreams, Into Whose Farrago A Divine Lesson Is Sometimes Slipped.

By Degrees We May Come To Know The Primitive Sense Of The Permanent Objects Of Nature, So That The World Shall Be To Us An Open Book, And Every Form Significant Of Its Hidden Life And Final Cause.

The Genius Is A Genius By The First Look He Casts On Any Object. Is His Eye Creative? Does He Not Rest In Angles And Colors, But Beholds The Design,--he Will Presently Undervalue The Actual Object.

We Wake From One Dream Into Another Dream.

Every Man Is Grave Alone.

Great Men Are They Who See That Spiritual Is Stronger Than Any Material Force - That Thoughts Rule The World.

Nature Magically Suits A Man To His Fortunes, By Making Them The Fruit Of His Character.

Really, All Things And Persons Are Related To Us, But According To Our Nature, They Act On Us Not At Once, But In Succession, Andwe Are Made Aware Of Their Presence One At A Time. All Persons, All Things Which We Have Known, Are Here Present, And Many More Than We See; The World Is Full.

Good Criticism Is Very Rare And Always Precious.

The Attraction And Superiority Of California Are In Its Days. It Has Better Days & More Of Them, Than Any Other Country.

True Friends Are Two People Who Are Comfortable Sharing Silence Together.

A Friend Is The Hope Of The Heart.

The Soul Knows Only The Soul; The Web Of Events Is The Flowing Robe In Which She Is Clothed.

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.

We Are Never Without A Pilot. When We Know Not How To Steer, And Dare Not Hoist A Sail, We Can Drift. The Current Knows The Way, Though We Do Not. The Ship Of Heaven Guides Itself, And Will Not Accept A Wooden Rudder.

To Be Great, You Must Be Misunderstood

Man Is Not A Farmer, Or A Professor, Or An Engineer, But He Is All. Man Is Priest, And Scholar, And Statesman, And Producer, And Soldier.

Books Take Their Place According To Their Specific Gravity As Surely As Potatoes In A Tub.

He Only Is Rich Who Owns The Day.

Tis A Short Sight To Limit Our Faith In Laws To Those Of Gravity, Of Chemistry, Of Botany, And So Forth.

We Are Rich Only Through What We Give, And Poor Only Through What We Refuse.

Our Poets Are Men Of Talents Who Sing, And Not The Children Of Music.

Do Not Speak Of God Much. After A Very Little Conversation On The Highest Nature, Thought Deserts Us And We Run Into Formalism.

The Book Written Against Fame And Learning Has The Author's Name On The Title-page.

Every Man Alone Is Sincere. At The Entrance Of A Second Person, Hypocrisy Begins. We Parry And Fend The Approach Of Our Fellow-man By Compliments, By Gossip, By Amusements, By Affairs. We Cover Up Our Thought From Him Under A Hundred Folds.

Is Not Marriage An Open Question, When It Is Alleged, From The Beginning Of The World, That Such As Are In The Institution Wish To Get Out, And Such As Are Out Wish To Get In?

The Aristocrat Is The Democrat Ripe, And Gone To Seed.

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

The Experience Of Each New Age Requires A New Confession, And The World Seems Always Waiting For Its Poet

Quotation Confesses Inferiority.

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.

Poetry Being ... When We Look From The Center Outward.

A Man Should Not Be A Silkworm; Nor A Nation A Tent Of Caterpillars.

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

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Behind Your Back

All History Is Biography.

Black Men Built The Railroads, Not Blue Eyes.

Heaven Sometimes Hedges A Rare Character About With Ungainliness And Odium, As The Burr That Protects The Fruit.

The Quality Of The Thought Differences The Egyptian And The Roman, The Austrian And The American.

To Aim To Convert A Man By Miracles Is A Profanation Of The Soul. A True Conversion, A True Christ, Is Now, As Always, To Be Madeby The Reception Of Beautiful Sentiments.

The Street Is Full Of Humiliations To The Proud.

What Omniscience Has Music! So Absolutely Impersonal, And Yet Every Sufferer Feels His Secret Sorrow Soothed.

I Wiped Away The Weeds And Foam, I Fetched My Sea-born Treasures Home; But The Poor, Unsightly, Noisome Things Had Left Their Beauty On The Shore, With The Sun And The Sand And The Wild Uproar.

Skepticism Is Unbelief In Cause And Effect. A Man Does Not See, That, As He Eats, So He Thinks: As He Deals, So He Is, And So He Appears; He Does Not See That His Son Is The Son Of His Thoughts And Of His Actions; That Fortunes Are Not Exceptions But Fruits; That Relation And Connection Are Not Somewhere And Sometimes, But Everywhere And Always; No Miscellany, No Exemption, No Anomaly,--but Method, And An Even Web; And What Comes Out, That Was Put In.

A Weed Is A Plant Whose Virtue Is Not Yet Known.

Continual Failure Is A Road To Success - If You Have The Strength To Go On.

Road To Success

A Garden Is Like Those Pernicious Machineries Which Catch A Man's Coat-skirt Or His Hand, And Draw In His Arm, His Leg , And His Whole Body To Irresistible Destruction.

If We Suddenly Plant Our Foot, And Say, - I Will Neither Eat Nor Drink Nor Wear Nor Touch Any Food Or Fabric Which I Do Not Know To Be Innocent, Or Deal With Any Person Whose Whole Manner Of Life Is Not Clear And Rational, We Shall Stand Still. Whose Is So? Not Mine; Not Thine; Not His. But I Think We Must Clear Ourselves Each One By The Interrogation, Whether We Have Earned Our Bread To-day By The Hearty Contribution Of Our Energies To The Common Benefit? And We Must Not Cease To Tend To The Correction Of These Flagrant Wrongs, By Laying One Stone Aright Every Day.

A Good Deal Of Our Politics Is Physiological.

A Little Integrity Is Better Than Any Career.

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

A Song Is No Song Unless The Circumstance Is Free And Fine. If A Singer Sing From A Sense Of Duty Or From Seeing No Way To Escape,i Had Rather Have None. Those Only Can Sleep Who Do Not Care To Sleep; And Those Only Write Or Speak Best Who Do Not Too Much Respect The Writing Or The Speaking.

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

I Believe It Is The Conviction Of The Purest Men, That The Net Amount Of Man And Man Does Not Much Vary. Each Is Incomparably Superior To His Companion In Some Faculty. His Want Of Skill In Other Directions, Has Added To His Fitness For His Own Work.

The Subject Is Said To Have The Property Of Making Dull Men Eloquent.

Insist Upon Yourself. Be Original.

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Hence, Instead Of Man Thinking, We Have The Bookworm. Hence, The Book-learned Class, Who Value Books, As Such; Not As Related To Nature And The Human Constitution, But As Making A Sort Of Third Estate With The World And The Soul. Hence, The Restorers Of Readings, The Emendators, The Bibliomaniacs Of All Degrees.

The Boxer's Ring Is The Enjoyment Of The Part Of Society Whose Animal Nature Alone Has Been Developed.

Give Me Insight Into Today And You May Have The Antique And Future Worlds.

In America And Europe, The Nomadism Is Of Trade And Curiosity.

Public Opinion, I Am Sorry To Say, Will Bear A Great Deal Of Nonsense. There Is Scarcely Any Absurdity So Gross, Whether In Religion, Politics, Science Or Manners, Which It Will Not Bear.

Nothing Great Was Ever Achieved Without Enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm Is The Height Of Man; It Is The Passing From The Human To The Divine.

The Eloquent Man Is He Who Is No Beautiful Speaker, But Who Is Inwardly And Desperately Drunk With A Certain Belief.

Cities Give Not The Human Senses Room Enough. We Go Out Daily And Nightly To Feed The Eyes On The Horizon, And Require So Much Scope, Just As We Need Water For Our Bath.

Why Should We Assume The Faults Of Our Friend, Or Wife, Or Father, Or Child, Because They Sit Around Our Hearth, Or Are Said To Have The Same Blood?

A Skilful Man Reads His Dreams For His Selfknowledge; Yet Not The Details, But The Quality.

The One Prudence In Life Is Concentration; The One Evil Is Dissipation: And It Makes No Difference Whether Our Dissipations Are Coarse Or Fine; Property And Its Cares, Friends And A Social Habit, Or Politics, Or Music, Or Feasting. Everything Is Good Which Takes Away One Plaything And Delusion More, And Drives Us Home To Add One Stroke Of Faithful Work.

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!

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

There Is Also Something Excellent In Every Audience,--the Capacity Of Virtue. They Are Ready To Be Beatified.

The Two Parties Which Divide The State, The Party Of Conservation And That Of Innovation, Are Very Old, And Have Disputed The Possession Of The World Ever Since It Was Made.

I Dip My Pen In The Blackest Ink, Because I'm Not Afraid Of Falling Into My Inkpot.

There Is Nothing We Value And Hunt And Cultivate And Strive To Draw To Us, But In Some Hour We Turn And Rend It.

Magic And All That Is Ascribed To It Is A Deep Presentiment Of The Powers Of Science.

It Is With A Good Book As It Is With Good Company.

We Do What We Can, And Then Make A Theory To Prove Our Performance The Best.

Be Lord Of A Day, Through Wisdom And Justice, And You Can Put Up Your History Books.

Is Not Prayer Also A Study Of Truth,--a Sally Of The Soul Into The Unfound Infinite? No Man Ever Prayed Heartily, Without Learningsomething. But When A Faithful Thinker, Resolute To Detach Every Object From Personal Relations, And See It In The Light Of Thought, Shall, At The Same Time, Kindle Science With The Fire Of The Holiest Affections, Then Will God Go Forth Anew Into Creation.

There Is Nothing In History To Parallel The Influence Of Jesus Christ.

Happy Is The Hearing Man; Unhappy The Speaking Man.

No Law Can Be Sacred To Me But That Of My Nature. Good And Bad Are But Names Very Readily Transferable To That Or This; The Only Right Is What Is After My Constitution; The Only Wrong Is What Is Against It.

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

We Are As Much Strangers In Nature, As We Are Aliens From God. We Do Not Understand The Notes Of Birds. The Fox And The Deer Run Away From Us; The Bear And Tiger Rend Us. We Do Not Know The Uses Of More Than A Few Plants, As Corn And The Apple, The Potato And The Vine. Is Not The Landscape, Every Glimpse Of Which Hath A Grandeur, A Face Of Him?

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

The Influence Of The Senses Have In Men Overpowered The Thought To The Degree That The Walls Of Time And Space Have Come To Look Solid, Real And Insurmountable. .. Yet Time And Space Are But Inverse Measures Of The Power Of The Mind. Man Is Capable Of Abolishing Them Both.

That Which Befits Us, Embosomed In Beauty And Wonder As We Are, Is Cheerfulness, And Courage, And The Endeavor To Realize Our Aspirations. Shall Not The Heart Which Has Received So Much, Trust The Power By Which It Lives? May It Not Quit Other Leadings, And Listen To The Soul That Has Guided It So Gently, And Taught It So Much, Secure That The Future Will Be Worthy Of The Past?

I Find It A Great And Fatal Difference Whether I Court The Muse, Or The Muse Courts Me. That Is The Ugly Disparity Between Age And Youth.

Friendship Buys Friendship.

The Prayer Of The Farmer Kneeling In His Field To Weed It, The Prayer Of The Rower Kneeling With The Stroke Of His Oar, Are True Prayers Heard Throughout Nature.

The Less A Man Thinks Or Knows About His Virtues, The Better We Like Him.

If The Tongue Had Not Been Framed For Articulation, Man Would Still Be A Beast In The Forest.

Greatness Is A Property For Which No Man Gets Credit Too Soon; It Must Be Possessed Long Before It Is Acknowledged.

Happy The Man Who Never Puts On A Face, But Receives Every Visitor With That Countenance He Has On.

If I Am The Devil's Child, I Will Live Then, By The Devil.

Your Actions Speak So Loud, I Can't Hear What You Say.

Passion, Though A Bad Regulator, Is A Powerful Spring.

The Ocean Is A Large Drop; A Drop Is A Small Ocean.

What Is Life But The Angle Of Vision? A Man Is Measured By The Angle At Which He Looks At Objects.

The Escape From All False Ties; Courage To Be What We Are; And Love Of What Is Simple And Beautiful; Independence, And Cheerful Relation, These Are The Essentials.

The Man, Who Has Seen The Rising Moon Break Out Of The Clouds At Midnight, Has Been Present Like An Archangel At The Creation Of Light And Of The World.

He Is Great Who Confers The Most Benefits.

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

Every Heroic Act Measures Itself By Its Contempt Of Some External Good. But It Finds Its Own Success At Last, And Then The Prudent Also Extol.

If I Have Lost Confidence In Myself, I Have The Universe Against Me.

Each Moment Of The Year Has Its Own Beauty.

I Have Heard That Stiff People Lose Something Of Their Awkwardness Under High Ceilings, And In Spacious Halls. I Think, Sculptureand Painting Have An Effect To Teach Us Manners, And Abolish Hurry.

What You Are Shouts At Me So Loudly That I Can't Hear A Word You Say.

As Arkwright And Whitney Were The Demi-gods Of Cotton, So Prolific Time Will Yet Bring An Inventor To Every Plant. There Is Not A Property In Nature But A Mind Is Born To Seek And Find It.

One Of The Illusions Of Life Is That The Present Hour Is Not The Critical Decisive Hour. Write It On Your Heart That Every Day Is The Best Day Of The Year. He Only Is Right Who Owns The Day, And No One Owns The Day Who Allows It To Be Invaded By Worry, Fret And Anxiety. Finish Every Day, And Be Done With It. You Have Done What You Could.

Life Is A Series Of Surprises And Would Not Be Worth Taking Or Keeping If It Were Not.

Our Faith Comes In Moments; Our Vice Is Habitual.

Cupid Is A Casuist, A Mystic, And A Cabalist,-- Can Your Lurking Thought Surprise, And Interpret Your Device, . . . . All Things Wait For And Divine Him,-- How Shall I Dare To Malign Him?

When The Spirit Is Not Master Of The World, Then It Is Its Dupe.

We Lie In The Lap Of Immense Intelligence.

There Is Health In Table Talk And Nursery Play. We Must Wear Old Shoes And Have Aunts And Cousins.

Sentimentalists ... Adopt Whatever Merit Is In Good Repute, And Almost Make It Hateful With Their Praise. The Warmer Their Expressions, The Colder We Feel.... Cure The Drunkard, Heal The Insane, Mollify The Homicide, Civilize The Pawnee, But What Lessons Can Be Devised For The Debauchee Of Sentiment?

Why Should I Cumber Myself With Regrets That The Receiver Is Not Capacious? It Never Troubles The Sun That Some Of His Rays Fall Wide And Vain Into Ungrateful Space, And Only A Small Part On The Reflecting Planet. Let Your Greatness Educate The Crude And Cold Companion.

Style Is Only The Frame To Hold Your Thoughts. It Is Like The Sash Of A Window; If Heavy, It Will Obscure The Light.

Let Us Not Look East And West For Materials Of Conversation, But Rest In Presence And Unity. A Just Feeling Will Fast Enough Supply Fuel For Discourse, If Speaking Be More Grateful Than Silence. When People Come To See Us, We Foolishly Prattle, Lest We Be Inhospitable. But Things Said For Conversation Are Chalk Eggs. Don't Say Things. What You Are Stands Over You The While, And Thunders So That I Cannot Hear What You Say To The Contrary.

The Corruption Of Man Is Followed By The Corruption Of Language. ... In Due Time, The Fraud Is Manifest, And Words Lose All Power To Stimulate The Understanding Or The Affections.

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 Life Of Man Is A Self-evolving Circle.

There Is Hope In Extravagance, There Is None In Routine.

Talent Alone Cannot Make A Writer. There Must Be A Man Behind The Book.

We Do Not Know Today Whether We Are Busy Or Idle. In Times When We Thought Ourselves Indolent, We Have Afterwards Discovered That Much Was Accomplished, And Much Was Begun In Us.

Self Improvement

A Day Is A Miniature Eternity.

In Every Landscape, The Point Of Astonishment Is The Meeting Of The Sky And The Earth, And That Is Seen From The First Hillock Aswell As From The Top Of The Alleghanies. The Stars At Night Stoop Down Over The Brownest, Homeliest Common, With All The Spiritual Magnificence Which They Shed On The Campagna, Or On The Marble Deserts Of Egypt.

I Ought To Go Upright And Vital, And Speak The Rude Truth In All Ways.

If We Tire Of The Saints, Shakspeare Is Our City Of Refuge.

People Only See What They Are Prepared To See. If You Look For What Is Good And What You Can Be Grateful For You Will Find It Everywhere.

There Is A Blessed Necessity By Which The Interest Of Men Is Always Driving Them To The Right; And, Again, Making All Crime Mean And Ugly.

Life Must Be Lived On A Higher Plane. We Must Go Up To A Higher Platform, To Which We Are Always Invited To Ascend; There, The Whole Aspect Of Things Changes.

And What Fastens Attention, In The Intercourse Of Life, Like Any Passage Betraying Affection Between Two Parties? Perhaps We Never Saw Them Before, And Never Shall Meet Them Again. But We See Them Exchange A Glance, Or Betray A Deep Emotion, And We Are No Longer Strangers. We Understand Them, And Take The Warmest Interest In The Development Of The Romance. All Mankind Love A Lover.

Life Too Near Paralyses Art.

Whenever You Are Sincerely Pleased You Are Nourished.

I Should As Soon Think Of Swimming Across Charles River, When I Wish To Go To Boston, As Of Reading All My Books In Originals, When I Have Them Rendered For Me In My Mother Tongue.

At Times The Whole World Seems To Be In Conspiracy To Importune You With Emphatic Trifles. Friend, Client, Child, Sickness, Fear, Want, Charity, All Knock At Once At Thy Closet Door And Say,—'come Out Unto Us.' But Keep Thy State; Come Not Into Their Confusion. The Power Men Possess To Annoy Me I Give Them By A Weak Curiosity. No Man Can Come Near Me But Through My Act.

Moral Qualities Rule The World, But At Short Distances The Senses Are Despotic.

I Do Then With My Friends As I Do With My Books. I Would Have Them Where I Can Find Them, But I Seldom Use Them.

The Intelligent Have A Right Over The Ignorant; Namely, The Right Of Instructing Them.

A More Secret, Sweet, And Overpowering Beauty Appears To Man When His Heart And Mind Open To The Sentiment Of Virtue. Then He Is Instructed In What Is Set Above Him. He Learns That His Being Is Without Bound; That To The Good, To The Perfect, He Is Born, Low As He Now Lies In Evil And Weakness.

War Disorganizes, But It Is To Reorganize.

The Best Part Of Health Is Fine Disposition

A Nation Never Falls But By Suicide.

Cultivate The Habit Of Being Grateful... And ...give Thanks Continuously.

We Must Hold A Man Amenable To Reason For The Choice Of His Daily Craft Or Profession. It Is Not An Excuse Any Longer For His Deeds That They Are The Custom Of His Trade. What Business Has He With An Evil Trade?

History Is The Action And Reaction Of These Two, Nature And Thought.

There Is A Tendency For Things To Right Themselves.

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