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Oxford Is A Little Aristocracy In Itself, Numerous And Dignified Enough To Rank With Other Estates In The Realm; And Where Fame And Secular Promotion Are To Be Had For Study, And In A Direction Which Has The Unanimous Respect Of All Cultivated Nations.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Oxford Is A Little

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Oxford Is A Little Aristocracy In Itself, Numerous And Dignified Enough To Rank With Other Estates In The Realm; And Where Fame And Secular Promotion Are To Be Had For Study, And In A Direction Which Has The Unanimous Respect Of All Cultivated Nations.

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More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only Poetry Inspires Poetry.

Ethics And Religion Differ Herein; That The One Is The System Of Human Duties Commencing From Man; The Other, From God. Religion Includes The Personality Of God; Ethics Does Not.

There Is No Man Of Nature's Worth In The Circle Of The Earth.

The Heroic Soul Does Not Sell Its Justice And Its Nobleness.

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

America Is Not Civil, Whilst Africa Is Barbarous.

Persons Are Fine Things, But They Cost So Much! For Thee I Must Pay Me.

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.

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.

Every Man's Condition Is A Solution In Hieroglyph To Those Inquiries He Would Put. He Acts It As Life Before He Apprehends It As Truth.

The Cruelest Foe Is A Masked Benefactor. The Wars Which Make History So Dreary Have Served The Cause Of Truth And Virtue.

The Sky Is The Daily Bread Of The Eyes.

The Senses Collect The Surface Facts Of Matter... It Was Sensation; When Memory Came, It Was Experience; When Mind Acted, It Was Knowledge; When Mind Acted On It As Knowledge, It Was Thought.

It Is Wonderful How Soon A Piano Gets Into A Log-hut On The Frontier. You Would Think They Found It Under A Pine-stump. With It Comes A Latin Grammar, And One Of Those Tow-head Boys Has Written A Hymn On Sunday. Now Let Colleges, Now Let Senates Take Heed! For Here Is One Who, Opening These Fine Tastes On The Basis Of The Pioneer's Iron Constitution, Will Gather All Their Laurels In His Strong Hands.

The Near Explains The Far. The Drop Is A Small Ocean. A Man Is Related To All Nature. This Perception Of The Worth Of The Vulgar Is Fruitful In Discoveries. Goethe, In This Very Thing The Most Modern Of The Moderns, Has Shown Us, As None Ever Did, The Genius Of The Ancients.

There Is No Strong Performance Without A Little Fanaticism In The Performer.

Solitary Converse With Nature; For Thence Are Ejaculated Sweet And Dreadful Words Never Uttered In Libraries. Ah! The Spring Days, The Summer Dawns, And October Woods!

We Resent All Criticism Which Denies Us Anything That Lies In Our Line Of Advance.

Keep Your Friendships In Repair.

If You Want A Friend You Need To Be A Friend.

The Less Government We Have The Better.

In Old Egypt, It Was Established Law, That The Vote Of A Prophet Be Reckoned Equal To A Hundred Hands. I Think It Was Much Under-estimated.

What Is Life But The Angle Of Vision? A Man Is Measured By The Angle At Which He Looks At Objects. What Is Life But What A Man Is Thinking Of All Day? This Is His Fate And His Employer. Knowing Is The Measure Of The Man. By How Much We Know, So We Are.

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

What A New Face Courage Puts On Everything!

Of Cheerfulness, Or A Good Temper - The More It Is Spent, The More Of It Remains.

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.

Give The Slave The Least Elevation Of Religious Sentiment, And He Is Not Slave: You Are The Slave: He Not Only In His Humility Feels His Superiority, Feels That Much Deplored Condition Of His To Be A Fading Trifle, But He Makes You Feel It Too. He Is The Master.

I Can Reason Down Or Deny Everything, Except This Perpetual Belly: Feed He Must And Will, And I Cannot Make Him Respectable.

Why Need I Volumes, If One Word Suffice?

For Every Benefit You Receive A Tax Is Levied.

And What Greater Calamity Can Fall Upon A Nation Than The Loss Of Worship.

I'm Happier. I Guess I Made Up My Mind To Be That Way.

Words Are Alive. Cut Them And They Bleed.

The Virtue In Most Request Is Conformity.

The Cheapness Of Man Is Every Day's Tragedy. It Is As Real A Loss That Others Should Be Low, As That We Should Be Low; For We Musthave A Society.

Nothing Is Quite Beautiful Alone; Nothing But Is Beautiful In The Whole. A Single Object Is Only So Far Beautiful As It Suggests This Universal Grace.

Marriage (in What Is Called The Spiritual World) Is Impossible, Because Of The Inequality Between Every Subject And Every Object.

But Do Your Work, And I Shall Know You. Do Your Work, And You Shall Reinforce Yourself.

The Religions We Call False Were Once True.

Nothing Great Was Ever Achieved Without Enthusiasm.

All The Thoughts Of A Turtle Are Turtle

Of All Tools, An Observatory Is The Most Sublime. . . . What Is So Good In A College As An Observatory? The Sublime Attaches To The Door And To The First Stair You Ascent, That This Is The Road To The Stars.

Every Revolution Was First A Thought In One Man's Mind; And When The Same Thought Occurs To Another Man, It Is The Key To That Era.

Few And Mean As My Gifts May Be, I Actually Am, And Do Not Need For My Own Assurance Or The Assurance Of My Fellows Any Secondary Testimony.

In The Highest Civilization The Book Is Still The Highest Delight.

Astronomy Is A Cold, Desert Science, With All Its Pompous Figures,-depends A Little Too Much On The Glass-grinder, Too Little On The Mind. 't Is Of No Use To Show Us More Planets And Systems. We Know Already What Matter Is, And More Or Less Of It Does Not Signify.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these Are The Threads On The Loom Of Time, These Are The Lords Of Life.

Luck Is Just Another Word For Tenacity Of Purpose.

We Boil At Different Degrees.

Being Different

Is It Not Better To Intimate Our Astonishment As We Pass Through This World If It Be Only For A Moment Ere We Are Swallowed Up In The Yeast Of The Abyss? I Will Lift Up My Hands And Say Kosmos.

Our Relations To Each Other Are Oblique And Casual.

What Strength Belongs To Every Plant And Animal In Nature. The Tree Or The Brook Has No Duplicity, No Pretentiousness, No Show. It Is, With All Its Might And Main, What It Is, And Makes One And The Same Impression And Effect At All Times. All The Thoughts Of A Turtle Are Turtle's, And Of A Rabbit, Rabbit's. But A Man Is Broken And Dissipated By The Giddiness Of His Will; He Does Not Throw Himself Into His Judgments; His Genius Leads Him One Way But 't Is Likely His Trade Or Politics In Quite Another.

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.

Not Gold, But Only Man Can Make A People Great And Strong; Men Who, For Truth And Honor's Sake, Stand Fast And Suffer Long.

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

Poverty Demoralizes. A Man In Debt Is So Far A Slave; And Wall-street Thinks It Easy For A Millionaire To Be A Man Of His Word, Aman Of Honor, But, That, In Failing Circumstances, No Man Can Be Relied On To Keep His Integrity.

You Cannot Do Wrong Without Suffering Wrong.

The Eye Is Easily Frightened.

Echo Waits With Art And Care And Will The Faults Of Song Repair.

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

How Painful To Give A Gift To Any Person Of Sensibility, Or Of Equality! It Is Next Worst To Receiving One

Society Is The Stage On Which Manners Are Shown; Novels Are The Literature. Novels Are The Journal Or Record Of Manners; And The New Importance Of These Books Derives From The Fact, That The Novelist Begins To Penetrate The Surface, And Treat This Part Of Life More Worthily.

The World - This Shadow Of The Soul, Or Other Me - Lies Wide Around. Its Attractions Are The Keys Which Unlock My Thoughts And Make Me Acquainted With Myself. I Run Eagerly Into This Resounding Tumult... So Much Only Of Life As I Know By Experience... The True Scholar Grudges Every Opportunity Of Action Past By, As A Loss Of Power.

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

Never Read Any Book That Is Not A Year Old.

There Are Many Faculties In Man, Each Of Which Takes Its Turn Of Activity, And That Faculty Which Is Paramount In Any Period And Exerts Itself Through The Strongest Nation, Determines The Civility Of That Age: And Each Age Thinks Its Own The Perfection Of Reason.

The Poet, The Painter, The Sculptor, The Musican, The Architect, Seek Each To Concentrate This Radiance Of The World On One Point, And Each In His Several Work To Satisfy The Love Of Beauty Which Stimulates Him To Produce.

Our Statute Is A Currency Which We Stamp With Our Own Portrait.

Music Takes Us Out Of The Actual And Whispers To Us Dim Secrets That Startles Out Wonder As To Who We Are, And For What, Whence, And Whereto.

In The First Place, All Books That Get Fairly Into The Vital Air Of The World Were Written By The Successful Class, By The Affirming And Advancing Class, Who Utter What Tens Of Thousands Feel Though They Cannot Say.

Labor Is God's Education.

You See, It's All Clear, We Were Meant To Be Here From The Beginning.

Were Meant To Be

He Is Great Who Is What He Is From Nature, And Who Never Reminds Us Of Others.

In Haydn's Oratorios, The Notes Present To The Imagination Not Only Motions, As, Of The Snake, The Stag, And The Elephant, But Colors Also; As The Green Grass.

People Destined To Meet Will Do So, Apparently By Chance, At Precisely The Right Moment.

The Case Wouldn't Be Overweight If You Didn't Have So Many Shoes. How Many Do You Really Need? This Pair, For Example, I Swear You Never Even Wore Them.

A Man Is The Whole Encyclopedia Of Facts.

Are You Not Scared By Seeing That The Gypsies Are More Attractive To Us Than The Apostles?

To Wade In Marshes And Sea Margins Is The Destiny Of Certain Bird, And They Are So Accurately Made For This That They Are Imprisoned In Those Places. Each Animal Out Of Its Habitat Would Starve. To The Physician, Each Man, Each Woman, Is An Amplification Of One Organ. A Soldier, A Locksmith, A Bank-clerk, And A Dancer Could Not Exchange Functions. And Thus We Are Victims Of Adaptation.

To Laugh Often And Much ... This Is To Have Succeeded. Probably Not From Emerson: Here's The Full Quotation And The Story.

Every Individual Strives To Grow And Exclude, To The Extremities Of The Universe, And To Impose The Law Of Its Being On Every Other Creature.

There Are Men Who, By Their Sympathetic Attractions, Carry Nations With Them, And Lead The Activity Of The Human Race.

The Age Of Puberty Is A Crisis In The Age Of Man Worth Studying. It Is The Passage From The Unconscious To The Conscious; From Thesleep Of Passions To Their Rage.

To Finish The Moment, To Find The Journey's End In Every Step Of The Road, To Live The Greatest Number Of Good Hours, Is Wisdom.

Let The Words Be Gazetted And Ridiculous Henceforward.

Do You Want To Be A Power In The World? Then Be Yourself. Be True To The Highest Within Your Soul And Then Allow Yourself To Be Governed By No Customs Or Conventionaliti Es Or Arbitrary Man-made Rules That Are Not Founded On Principle.

We Walk Alone In The World.

All Violence, All That Is Dreary And Repels, Is Not Power, But The Absence Of Power.

When It Is Darkest, We Can See The Stars.

Suicide Inspirational

What Potent Blood Hath Modest May.

The Soul Is The Perceiver And Revealer Of Truth. We Know Truth When We See It, Let Skeptic And Scoffer Say What They Choose.

Whenever A True Theory Appears, It Will Be Its Own Evidence. Its Test Is, That It Will Explain All Phenomena.

Do Not Spill Thy Soul In Running Hither And Yon, Grieving Over The Mistakes And The Vices Of Others. The One Person Whom It Is Most Necessary To Reform Is Yourself.

I Look On Trade And Every Mechanical Craft As Education Also. But Let Me Discriminate What Is Precious Herein. There Is In Each Ofthese Works An Act Of Invention, An Intellectual Step, Or Short Series Of Steps Taken; That Act Or Step Is The Spiritual Act; All The Rest Is Mere Repetition Of The Same A Thousand Times.

The Chief Mourner Does Not Always Attend The Funeral.

The Jews Believed Jerusalem To Be The Centre. I Have Seen A Kratometric Chart Designed To Show That The City Of Philadelphia Was In The Same Thermic Belt, And, By Inference, In The Same Belt Of Empire, As The Cities Of Athens, Rome, And London. It Was Drawn By A Patriotic Philadelphian, And Was Examined With Pleasure, Under His Showing, By The Inhabitants Of Chestnut Street. But, When Carried To Charleston, To New Orleans, And To Boston, It Somehow Failed To Convince The Ingenious Scholars Of All Those Capitals.

I Read The Other Day Some Verses Written By An Eminent Painter Which Were Original And Not Conventional. The Soul Always Hears An Admonition In Such Lines, Let The Subject Be What It May. The Sentiment They Instil Is Of More Value Than Any Thought They May Contain. To Believe Your Own Thought, To Believe That What Is True For You In Your Private Heart Is True For All Men, - That Is Genius.

Everything In Nature Contains All The Powers Of Nature. Everything Is Made Of One Hidden Stuff.

The Light By Which We See In This World Comes Out From The Soul Of The Observer. Wherever Any Noble Sentiment Dwelt, It Made The Faces And Houses Around To Shine. Nay, The Powers Of This Busy Brain Are Miraculous And Illimitable.

Of Course, He Who Has Put Forth His Total Strength In Fit Actions, Has The Richest Return Of Wisdom.

Nature Turns All Malfaisance To Good.

The Kingdom Of Man Over Nature, Which Cometh Not With Observation,--a Dominion Such As Now Is Beyond His Dream Of God,--he Shall Enter Without More Wonder Than The Blind Man Feels Who Is Gradually Restored To Perfect Sight.

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

I Have Heard That Whoever Loves Is In No Condition Old.

Genius Always Finds Itself A Century Too Early.

The Primary Wisdom Is Intuition.

A Man Often Pays Dear For A Small Frugality.

Not From A Vain Or Shallow Thought His Awful Jove Young Phidias Brought.

Providence Has A Wild, Rough, Incalculable Road To Its End, And It Is Of No Use To Try To Whitewash Its Huge, Mixed Instrumentalities, Or To Dress Up That Terrific Benefactor In A Clean Shirt And White Neckcloth Of A Student In Divinity.

Knowledge Is The Knowing That We Cannot Know.

The Virtue Of Books Is To Be Readable.

We May Be Partial, But Fate Is Not.

I Cannot Often Enough Say, That A Man Is Only A Relative And Representative Nature. Each Is A Hint Of The Truth, But Far Enough From Being That Truth, Which Yet He Quite Newly And Inevitably Suggests To Us. If I Seek It In Him, I Shall Not Find It.

Some People Will Tell You There Is A Great Deal Of Poetry And Fine Sentiment In A Chest Of Tea.

The Miracles Of Genius Always Rest On Profound Convictions Which Refuse To Be Analyzed.

The Civility Of No Race Can Be Perfect Whilst Another Race Is Degraded. It Is A Doctrine Alike Of The Oldest And Of The Newest Philosophy, That Man Is One, And That You Cannot Injure Any Member, Without A Sympathetic Injury To All The Members

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.

The Soul Raised Over Passion Beholds Identity And Eternal Causation, Perceives The Self-existance Of Truth And Right, And Calms Itself With Knowing That All Things Go Well.

A Friend May Be Nature's Most Magnificent Creation.

It Is A Capital Blunder; As You Discover, When Another Man Recites His Charities.

Sleep Takes Off The Costume Of Circumstance, Arms Us With Terrible Freedom, So That Every Will Rushes To Deed. A Skillful Man Reads His Dreams For His Self-knowledge; Yet Not The Details, But The Quality. What Part Does He Play In Them - A Cheerful, Manly Part, Or A Poor, Drivelling Part? However Monstrous And Grotesque Their Apparitions, They Have A Substantial Truth.

The Most Advanced Nations Are Always Those Who Navigate The Most. The Power Which The Sea Requires In The Sailor Makes A Man Of Him Very Fast, And The Change Of Shores And Population Clears His Head Of Much Nonsense Of His Wigwam.

Skill To Do Comes Of Doing.

If I Cannot Brag Of Knowing Something, Then I Brag Of Not Knowing It; At Any Rate, Brag.

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

I Must Be Myself. I Cannot Break Myself Any Longer For You, Or You. If You Can Love Me For What I Am, We Shall Be The Happier. If You Cannot, I Will Still Seek To Seserve That You Should.

The Enthusiast Always Finds The Master, The Masters, Whom He Seeks. Always Genius Seeks Genius, Desires Nothing So Much As To Be A Pupil And To Find Those Who Can Lend It Aid To Perfect Itself.

There Was Never A Child So Lovely But His Mother Was Glad To Get Him To Sleep.

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.

No Change Of Circumstances Can Repair A Defect Of Character.

Self Trust Is The Essence Of Heroism.

The True Ship Is The Ship Builder.

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

Only A Biker Knows Why A Dog Sticks His Head Out Of A Car Window.

The Life Of Man Is The True Romance, Which When It Is Valiantly Conduced, Will Yield The Imagination A Higher Joy Than Any Fiction.

Flowers So Strictly Belong To Youth, That We Adult Men Soon Come To Feel, That Their Beautiful Generations Concern Not Us: We Havehad Our Day; Now Let The Children Have Theirs. The Flowers Jilt Us, And We Are Old Bachelors With Our Ridiculous Tenderness.

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.

Power And Speed Be Hands And Feet.

What We Call Results Are Beginnings.

There Is No King Or Sovereign State That Can Fix A Hero's Rate; Each To All Is Venerable.

The Imaginative Faculty Of The Soul Must Be Fed With Objects Immense And Eternal.

To The Attentive Eye, Each Moment Of The Year Has Its Own Beauty, And In The Same Fields, It Beholds, Every Hour, A Picture Which Was Never Seen Before, And Which Shall Never Be Seen Again.

A Character Is Like An Acrostic Or Alexandrian Stanza; - Read It Forward, Backward, Or Across, It Still Spells The Same Thing.

Great Hearts Steadily Send Forth The Secret Forces That Incessantly Draw Great Events.

Law Of Attraction

Life Is Girt All Round With A Zodiac Of Sciences, The Contributions Of Men Who Have Perished To Add Their Point Of Light To Our Sky. ... These Road-makers On Every Hand Enrich Us. We Must Extend The Area Of Life And Multiply Our Relations. We Are As Much Gainers By Finding A Property In The Old Earth As By Acquiring A New Planet.

The Virtues Of Society Are Vices Of The Saint. The Terror Of Reform Is The Discovery That We Must Cast Away Our Virtues, Or What We Have Always Esteemed Such, Into The Same Pit That Has Consumed Our Grosser Vices.

There Are Other Measures Of Self-respect For A Man, Than The Number Of Clean Shirts He Puts On Every Day.

A Bullet Had Found Him, His Blood Ran Out As He Cried. No Money Could Save Him, So He Laid Down And Died. Ooh, What A Lucky Man He Was.

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

All Public Facts Are To Be Individualized, All Private Facts Are To Be Generalized.

By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote.

There Is No Good Theory Of Disease Which Does Not At Once Suggest A Cure.

Nature Hates Monopolies And Exceptions.

The Secret Of Fortune Is Joy In Our Hands.

To Finish The Moment, To Find The Journey's End In Every Step Of The Road, To Live The Greatest Number Of Good Hours, Is Wisdom. It Is Not The Part Of Men, But Of Fanatics, Or Of Mathematicians, If You Will, To Say, That, The Shortness Of Life Considered, It Is Not Worth Caring Whether For So Short A Duration We Were Sprawling In Want, Or Sitting High. Since Our Office Is With Moments, Let Us Husband Them.

The True Preacher Can Be Known By This, That He Deals Out To The People His Life,--life Passed Through The Fire Of Thought.

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.

Fear Is An Instructor Of Great Sagacity, And The Herald Of All Revolutions.

Thus Grows Up Fashion, An Equivocal Semblance, The Most Puissant, The Most Fantastic And Frivolous, The Most Feared And Followed, And Which Morals And Violence Assault In Vain.

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

Evil Is Merely Privative, Not Absolute: It Is Like Cold, Which Is The Privation Of Beat.

In Actions Of Enthusiasm, This Drawback Appears: But In Those Lower Activities, Which Have No Higher Aim Than To Make Us More Comfortable And More Cowardly, In Actions Of Cunning, Actions That Steal And Lie, Actions That Divorce The Speculative From The Practical Faculty, And Put A Ban On Reason And Sentiment, There Is Nothing Else But Drawback And Negation.

I Suppose An Entire Cabinet Of Shells Would Be An Expression Of The Whole Human Mind; A Flora Of The Whole Globe Would Be So Likewise, Or A History Of Beasts; Or A Painting Of All The Aspects Of The Clouds. Everything Is Significant.

Cowardice Shuts The Eyes Till The Sky Is Not Larger Than A Calf-skin: Shuts The Eyes So That We Cannot See The Horse That Is Running Away With Us; Worse, Shuts The Eyes Of The Mind And Chills The Heart.

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

The First Questions Are Always To Be Asked, And The Wisest Doctor Is Gravelled By The Inquisitiveness Of A Child.

The People Are To Be Taken In Very Small Doses.

Public Speaking

There Never Was A Strong Character That Was Not Made Strong By Discipline Of The Will; There Never Was A Strong People That Did Not Rank Subordination And Discipline Among The Signal Virtues. Subjection To Moods Is The Mark Of A Deteriorating Morality. There Is No Baser Servitude Than That Of The Man Whose Caprices Are His Masters, And A Nation Composed Of Such Men Could Not Long Preserve Its Liberties.

Throw A Stone Into The Stream And The Ripples That Propagate Themselves Are The Beautiful Type Of All Influence.

Skepticism Is Slow Suicide.

Good Breeding, A Union Of Kindness And Independence.

The Permanence Of All Books Is Fixed By No Effort Friendly Or Hostile, But By Their Own Specific Gravity, Or The Intrinsic Importance Of Their Contents To The Constant Mind Of Man.

The Line Of Beauty Is The Line Of Perfect Economy.

The Eye Obeys Exactly The Action Of The Mind.

Insist On Yourself; Never Imitate. Your Own Gift You Can Offer With The Cumulative Force Of A Whole Life's Cultivation, But Of The Adopted Talent Of Another, You Have Only An Extemporaneous, Half Possession.

In The Great Books Of India, An Empire Spoke To Us, Nothing Small Or Unworthy, But Large, Serene, Consistent, The Voice Of An Old Intelligence, Which In Another Age And Climate Had Pondered And Thus Disposed Of The Questions That Exercise Us.

We Are Symbols, And Inhabit Symbols.

Women, More Than All, Are The Element And Kingdom Of Illusion. Being Fascinated, They Fascinate.

A Fact Is The End Or Last Issue Of Spirit. The Visible Creation Is The Terminus Or The Circumference Of The Invisible World.

The Fox Has Many Tricks. The Hedgehog Has But One. But That Is The Best Of All.

The Italians Are Fond Of Red Clothes, Peacock Plumes, And Embroidery; And I Remember One Rainy Morning In The City Of Palermo, The Street Was Ablaze With Scarlet Umbrellas.

No Man Can Help Another Without Helping Himself.

People Say Law But They Mean Wealth.

The Soul Knows No Persons.

A Great Man Scarcely Knows How He Dines, How He Dresses; But Without Railing Or Precision, His Living Is Natural And Poetic.

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

Coal Is A Portable Climate. It Carries The Heat Of The Tropics To Labrador And The Polar Circle; And It Is The Means Of Transporting Itself Whithersoever It Is Wanted. Watt And Stephenson Whispered In The Ear Of Mankind Their Secret, That A Half-ounce Of Coal Will Draw Two Tons A Mile, And Coal Carries Coal, By Rail And By Boat, To Make Canada As Warm As Calcutta, And With Its Comfort Brings Its Industrial Power.

All Forms Of Government Symbolize An Immortal Government, Common To All Dynasties And Independent Of Numbers, Perfect Where Two Men Exist, Perfect Where There Is Only One Man.

Thought Is The Seed Of Action.

All Vigor Is Contagious.

There Is Always A Certain Meanness In The Argument Of Conservatism, Joined With A Certain Superiority In Its Fact.

I Am Not Much An Advocate For Traveling, And I Observe That Men Run Away To Other Countries Because They Are Not Good In Their Own, And Run Back To Their Own Because They Pass For Nothing In The New Places. For The Most Part, Only The Light Characters Travel. Who Are You That Have No Task To Keep You At Home?

The Soul Of God Is Poured Into The World Through The Thoughts Of Men.

A Man Should Carry Nature In His Head.

You Have A Place To Live In This World Which No Other Man Can Occupy; Hence No Competitors.

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

My Companion Assumes To Know My Mood And Habit Of Thought, And We Go On From Explanation To Explanation, Until All Is Said That Words Can, And We Leave Matters Just As They Were At First, Because Of That Vicious Assumption.

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

Success In Your Work, The Finding A Better Method, The Better Understanding That Insures The Better Performing Is Hat And Coat, Is Food And Wine, Is Fire And Horse And Health And Holiday. At Least, I Find That Any Success In My Work Has The Effect On My Spirits Of All These.

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