Background Image

...

Shakespeare Carries Us To Such A Lofty Strain Of Intelligent Activity, As To Suggest A Wealth Which Beggars His Own; And We Then Feel That The Splendid Works Which He Has Created, And Which In Other Hours We Extol As A Sort Of Self-existent Poetry, Take No Stronger Hold Of Real Nature Than The Shadow Of A Passing Traveller On The Rock. The Inspiration Which Uttered Itself In Hamlet And Lear Could Utter Things As Good From Day To Day, For Ever.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Shakespeare Carries Us To

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Shakespeare Carries Us To Such A Lofty Strain Of Intelligent Activity, As To Suggest A Wealth Which Beggars His Own; And We Then Feel That The Splendid Works Which He Has Created, And Which In Other Hours We Extol As A Sort Of Self-existent Poetry, Take No Stronger Hold Of Real Nature Than The Shadow Of A Passing Traveller On The Rock. The Inspiration Which Uttered Itself In Hamlet And Lear Could Utter Things As Good From Day To Day, For Ever.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

I Am Ready To Die Out Of Nature, And Be Born Again Into This New Yet Unapproachable America I Have Found In The West.

The Law Of Nature Is Alternation For Evermore. Each Electrical State Superinduces The Opposite. The Soul Environs Itself With Friends, That It May Enter Into A Grander Self-acquaintance Or Solitude; And It Goes Alone For A Season, That It May Exalt Its Conversation Or Society.

If We Could Have Any Security Against Moods! If The Profoundest Prophet Could Be Holden To His Words, And The Hearer Who Is Readyto Sell All And Join The Crusade, Could Have Any Certificate That To-morrow His Prophet Shall Not Unsay His Testimony!

Let There Be Worse Cotton And Better Men.

I Know Of No Such Unquestionable Badge And Ensign Of A Sovereign Mind As That Of Tenacity Of Purpose.

Broader And Deeper We Must Write Our Annals, From An Ethical Reformation, From An Influx Of The Ever New, Ever Sanative Conscience, If We Would Trulier Express Our Central And Wide-related Nature, Instead Of This Old Chronology Of Selfishness And Pride To Which We Have Too Long Lent Our Eyes. Already That Day Exists For Us, Shines In On Us At Unawares, But The Path Of Science And Of Letters Is Not The Way Into Nature. The Idiot, The Indian, The Child, And Unschooled Farmer's Boy, Stand Nearer To The Light By Which Nature Is To Be Read, Than The Dissector Or The Antiquary.

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.

For Every Seeing Soul, There Are Two Absorbing Facts - I, And The Abyss.

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

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.

Great Is Paint; Nay, God Is The Painter; And We Rightly Accuse The Critic Who Destroys Too Many Illusions. Society Does Not Love Its Unmaskers.

If You Believe In The Soul, Do Not Clutch At Sensual Sweetness Before It Is Ripe On The Slow Tree Of Cause And Effect.

The First Wealth Is Health.

We Do Not Count A Man's Years Until He Has Nothing Else To Count.

There Is This To Be Said In Favor Of Drinking, That It Takes The Drunkard First Out Of Society, Then Out Of The World.

It Makes A Great Difference In The Force Of A Sentence, Whether A Man Be Behind It Or No.

Always The Seer Is A Sayer. Somehow His Dream Is Told; Somehow He Publishes It With Solemn Joy: Sometimes With Pencil On Canvas, Sometimes With Chisel On Stone, Sometimes In Towers And Aisles Of Granite, His Soul's Worship Is Builded; Sometimes In Anthems Of Indefinite Music, But Clearest And Most Permanent, In Words.

You Are Constantly Invited To Be What You Are.

Mankind Have Such A Deep Stake In Inward Illumination, That There Is Much To Be Said By The Hermit Or Monk In Defence Of His Life Of Thought And Prayer.

The Horseman Serves The Horse, The Neat-herd Serves The Neat, The Merchant Serves The Purse, The Eater Serves His Meat; 'tis The Day Of The Chattel, Web To Weave, And Corn To Grind, Things Are In The Saddle, And Ride Mankind.

Children Are All Foreigners.

He Is Rich Who Owns The Day, And No One Owns The Day Who Allows It To Be Invaded With Fret And Anxiety.

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.

When I Read A Good Book, I Wish My Life Were Three Thousand Years Long.

This Is My Wish For You: Comfort On Difficult Days, Smiles When Sadness Intrudes, Rainbows To Follow The Clouds, Laughter To Kiss Your Lips, Sunsets To Warm Your Heart, Hugs When Spirits Sag, Beauty For Your Eyes To See, Friendships To Brighten Your Being, Faith So That You Can Believe, Confidence For When You Doubt, Courage To Know Yourself, Patience To Accept The Truth, Love To Complete Your Life.

The First Thing A Great Person Does Is Make Us Realize The Insignificance Of Circumstance.

The Moment We Indulge Our Affections, The Earth Is Metamorphosed.

Men Love To Wonder, And That Is The Seed Of Science.

If We Consider What Happens In Conversation, In Reveries, In Remorse, In Times Of Passion, In Surprises, In The Instructions Of Dreams, Wherein Often We See Ourselves In Masquerade,--the Droll Disguises Only Magnifying And Enhancing A Real Element, And Forcing It On Our Distinct Notice,--we Shall Catch Many Hints That Will Broaden And Lighten Into Knowledge Of The Secret Of Nature.

The Life Of Man Is A Self-evolving Circle, Which, From A Ring Imperceptibly Small, Rushes On All Sides Outwards To New And Largercircles, And That Without End.

Never Utter The Truism But Live It Among Men.

The Sanity Of Society Is A Balance Of A Thousand Insanity's.

There Is One Topic Peremptorily Forbidden To All Well-bred, To All Rational Mortals, Namely, Their Distempers. If You Have Not Slept Or If You Have Slept Or If You Have Head Ache Or Sciatica Or Leprosy Or Thunder-stroke, I Beseech You, By All Angels, To Hold Your Peace And Not Pollute The Morning.

Thought And Knowledge Are Natures In Which Apparatus And Pretension Avail Nothing. Gowns, And Pecuniary Foundations, Though Of Towns Of Gold, Can Never Countervail The Least Sentence Or Syllable Of Wit. Forget This, And Out American Colleges Will Recede In Their Public Importance Whilst They Grow Richer Every Year.

For The Resolute And Determined, There Is Time And Opportunity.

Nature Hates Calculators.

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

The Spirit Only Can Teach. Not Any Profane Man, Not Any Sensual, Not Any Liar, Not Any Slave Can Teach, But Only He Can Give, Whohas; He Only Can Create, Who Is. The Man On Whom The Soul Descends, Through Whom The Soul Speaks, Alone Can Teach. Courage, Piety, Love, Wisdom, Can Teach; And Every Man Can Open His Door To These Angels, And They Shall Bring Him The Gift Of Tongues. But The Man Who Aims To Speak As Books Enable, As Synods Use, As The Fashion Guides, And As Interest Commands, Babbles. Let Him Hush.

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.

A Lady With Whom I Was Riding In The Forest Said To Me That The Woods Always Seemed To Her To Wait, As If The Genii Who Inhabit Them Suspend Their Deeds Until The Wayfarer Had Passed Onward; A Thought Which Poetry Has Celebrated In The Dance Of The Fairies, Which Breaks Off On The Approach Of Human Feet.

The Crystal Sphere Of Thought Is As Concentrical As The Geological Structure Of The Globe. As Our Soils And Rocks Lie In Strata, Concentric Strata, So Do All Men's Thinkings Run Laterally, Never Vertically.

Greek Architecture Is The Flowering Of Geometry.

Let Us Not Be Too Much Acquainted. I Would Have A Man Enter His House Through A Hall Filled With Heroic And Sacred Sculptures, That He Might Not Want The Hint Of Tranquillity And Self-poise.

Don't Trust Children With Edge Tools. Don't Trust Man, Great God, With More Power Than He Has Until He Has Learned To Use That Little Better. What A Hell We Should Make Of The World If We Could Do What We Would!

All Life Is A Nap. The More Naps You Take The Better.

Men Are What Their Mothers Made Them.

All Power Is Of One Kind, A Sharing Of The Nature Of The World. The Mind That Is Parallel With The Laws Of Nature Will Be In The Current Of Events, And Strong With Their Strength.

If We Meet No Gods, It Is Because We Harbor None.

What's A Book? Everything Or Nothing. The Eye That Sees It All.

In The Death Of My Son, Now More Than Two Years Ago, I Seem To Have Lost A Beautiful Estate,--no More. I Cannot Get It Nearer To Me.

Unless You Try To Do Something Beyond What You Have Already Mastered, You Will Never Grow.

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.

This Very Certain That Each Man Carries In His Eye The Exact Indication Of His Rank In The Immense Scale Of Men, And We Are Always Learning To Read It. A Complete Man Should Need No Auxiliaries To His Personal Presence.

There Are Not In The World At Any One Time More Than A Dozen Persons Who Read And Understand Plato:-never Enough To Pay For An Edition Of His Works; Yet To Every Generation These Come Duly Down, For The Sake Of Those Few Persons, As If God Brought Them Written In His Hand.

The Passages Of Shakespeare That We Most Prize Were Never Quoted Until Within This Century.

When The Man Is At Home, His Standing In Society Is Well Known And Quietly Taken; But When He Is Abroad, It Is Problematical, And Is Dependent On The Success Of His Manners.

But The Best Read Naturalist Who Lends An Entire And Devout Attention To Truth, Will See That There Remains Much To Learn Of His Relation To The World, And That It Is Not To Be Learned By Any Addition Or Subtraction Or Other Comparison Of Known Quantities, But Is Arrived At By Untaught Sallies Of The Spirit, By A Continual Self-recovery, And By Entire Humility.

The Highest Virtue Is Always Against The Law.

There Is More In Every Person's Soul Than We Think.

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

The Mass Are Animal, In Pupilage, And Near Chimpanzee.

Every Discourse Is An Approximate Answer: But It Is Of Small Consequence, That We Do Not Get It Into Verbs And Nouns, Whilst It Abides For Contemplation Forever.

Genius, Even, As It Is The Greatest Good, Is He Greatest Harm.

My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

A Rush Of Thoughts Is The Only Conceivable Prosperity That Can Come To Us.

Neither You Nor The World Knows What You Can Do Until You Have Tried.

When Private Men Shall Act With Original Views, The Lustre Will Be Transferred From The Actions Of Kings To Those Of Gentlemen.

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

The True Philosopher And The True Poet Are One, And A Beauty, Which Is Truth, And A Truth, Which Is Beauty, Is The Aim Of Both.

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.

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.

Conservatism Stands On Man's Confessed Limitations; Reform On His Indisputable Infinitude; Conservatism On Circumstance; Liberalism On Power; One Goes To Make An Adroit Member Of The Social Frame; The Other To Postpone All Things To The Man Himself.

The Happiest Man Is He Who Learns From Nature The Lesson Of Worship

O Friend, My Bosom Said, Through Thee Alone The Sky Is Arched. Through Thee The Rose Is Red; All Things Through Thee Take Nobler Form, And Look Beyond The Earth, The Mill-round Of Our Fate Appears A Sun-path In Thy Worth. Me Too Thy Nobleness Has Taught To Master My Despair; The Fountains Of My Hidden Life Are Through Thy Friendship Fair.

Judicious Praise Is To Children What The Sun Is To Flowers. Christian Bovee A Little Praise Goes A Great Ways.

Get Health. No Labor, Effort Nor Exercise That Can Gain It Must Be Grudged.

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

Man Is The End Of Nature; Nothing So Easily Organizes Itself In Every Part Of The Universe As He; No Moss, No Lichen Is So Easilyborn; And He Takes Along With Him And Puts Out From Himself The Whole Apparatus Of Society And Condition Extempore, As An Army Encamps In A Desert, And Where All Was Just Now Blowing Sand, Creates A White City In An Hour, A Government, A Market, A Place For Feasting, For Conversation, And For Love.

We Do Not Yet Trust The Unknown Power Of Thoughts.

Power Of Thought

Let A Stoic Open The Resources Of Man, And Tell Men They Are Not Leaning Willows, But Can And Must Detach Themselves; That With The Exercise Of Self-trust, New Powers Shall Appear.

I Appeal Now To The Convictions Of The Communicants, And Ask Such Persons Whether They Have Not Been Occasionally Conscious Of A Painful Confusion Of Thought Between The Worship Due To God And The Commemoration Due To Christ.

The Eye Obeys Exactly The Action Of The Mind.

Give Me Truths For I Am Weary Of The Surfaces.

There Are Books... Which Rank In Our Life With Parents And Lovers And Passionate Experiences.

The World Exists, As I Understand It, To Teach The Science Of Liberty.

In Vain Produced, All Rays Return; Evil Will Bless, And Ice Will Burn.

As Soon As A Child Has Left The Room His Strewn Toys Become Affecting.

The World Is So Beautiful That I Can Hardly Believe It Exists.

I Pay The Schoolmaster, But 'tis The Schoolboys That Educate My Son.

You Cannot Sincerely Try To Help Another Without Helping Yourself

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.

As Every Pool Reflects The Image Of The Sun, So Every Thought And Thing Restores Us An Image And Creature Of The Supreme Good. Theuniverse Is Perforated By A Million Channels For His Activity. All Things Mount And Mount.

The Piety Of The Hebrew Prophets Purges Their Grossness. The Circumcision Is An Example Of The Power Of Poetry To Raise The Low And Offensive.

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.

Men Of Character Are The Conscience Of The Society To Which They Belong.

The Persons Who Constitute The Natural Aristocracy, Are Not Found In The Actual Aristocracy, Or, Only On Its Edge; As The Chemicalenergy Of The Spectrum Is Found To Be Greatest Just Outside Of The Spectrum.

Life Is To Be Lived, Not Controlled.

We Learn That God Is; That He Is In Me; And That All Things Are Shadows Of Him.

There Is No Calamity That Right Words Will Not Begin To Redress

Be An Opener Of Doors For Such As Come After Thee.

How Much Of Human Life Is Lost In Waiting.

Our Impatience Of Miles, When We Are In A Hurry; But It Is Still Best That A Mile Should Have Seventeen Hundred And Sixty Yards.

Culture Is One Thing And Varnish Is Another.

My Friends Have Come To Me Unsought. The Great God Gave Them To Me. By Oldest Right, By The Divine Affinity Of Virtue With Itself,i Find Them, Or Rather Not I, But The Deity In Me And In Them Derides And Cancels The Thick Walls Of The Individual Character, Relation, Age, Sex, Circumstance, At Which He Usually Connives, And Now Makes Many One.

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.

But The Mark Of American Merit In Painting, In Sculpture, In Poetry, In Fiction, In Eloquence, Seems To Be A Certain Grace Withoutgrandeur, And Itself Not New But Derivative; A Vase Of Fair Outline, But Empty,--which Whoso Sees, May Fill With What Wit And Character Is In Him, But Which Does Not, Like The Charged Cloud, Overflow With Terrible Beauty, And Emit Lightnings On All Beholders.

Nature Never Hurries: Atom By Atom, Little By Little, She Achieves Her Work. The Lesson One Learns From Yachting Or Planting Is The Manners Of Nature; Patience With The Delays Of Wind And Sun, Delays Of The Seasons, Bad Weather, Excess Or Lack Of Water.

Do You See That Kitten Chasing So Prettily Her Own Tail? If You Could Look With Her Eyes, You Might See Her Surrounded With Hundreds Of Figures Performing Complex Dramas, With Tragic And Comic Issues, Long Conversations, Many Characters, Many Ups And Downs Of Fate.

There Is More Difference In The Quality Of Our Pleasures Than In The Amount.

Life Is Not Measured By Its Length, But By Its Depth.

The Field Cannot Be Seen From Within The Field.

Self Reliance, The Height And Perfection Of Man, Is Reliance On God.

All Great Successes Are The Triumph Of Persistence.

Do What You're Afraid To Do.

Each Man Reserves To Himself Alone The Right Of Being Tedious.

Aristotle And Plato Are Reckoned The Respective Heads Of Two Schools. A Wise Man Will See That Aristotle Platonizes.

Great Works Of Art Have No More Affecting Lesson For Us Than This. They Teach Us To Abide By Our Own Spontaneous Expression With Good Humored Inflexibility Whether The Whole Cry Of Voices Is On The Other Side.

Do The Thing And You Will Have The Power.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It.

It Is About Your Outlook Towards Life. You Can Either Regret Or Rejoice.

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.

The Invariable Mark Of Wisdom Is To See The Miraculous In The Common.

A Man Is The Whole Encyclopedia Of Facts.

What I Must Do Is All That Concerns Me, Not What People Think. This Rule,equally Arduous In Actual And Intellectual Life, May Serve For The Whole Distinction Between Greatness And Meanness. It Is The Harder, Because You Will Always Find Those Who Think They Know What Is Your Duty Better Than You Know It. It Is Easy In The World To Live After The World's Opinion; It Is Easy In Solitude To Live After Our Own; But The Great Man Is He Who In The Midst Of The Crowd Keeps With Perfect Sweetness The Independence Of Solitude.

No Man Can Help Another Without Helping Himself.

We Teach Boys To Be Such Men As We Are. We Do Not Teach Them To Aspire To Be All They Can. We Do Not Give Them A Training As If Webelieved In Their Noble Nature. We Scarce Educate Their Bodies. We Do Not Train The Eye And The Hand. We Exercise Their Understandings To The Apprehension And Comparison Of Some Facts, To A Skill In Numbers, In Words; We Aim To Make Accountants, Attorneys, Engineers; But Not To Make Able, Earnest, Great- Hearted Men.

Speech Is Power: Speech Is To Persuade, To Convert, To Compel. It Is To Bring Another Out Of His Bad Sense Into Your Good Sense.

Power Of Speech

Great Geniuses Have The Shortest Biographies.

The Dice Of God Are Always Loaded.

Our Age Is Very Cheap And Intelligible. Unroof Any House, And You Shall Find It. The Well-being Consists In Having A Sufficiency Of Coffee And Toast, With A Daily Newspaper; A Well Glazed Parlor, With Marbles, Mirrors And Centre-table; And The Excitement Of A Few Parties And A Few Rides In A Year.

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

Science Does Not Know Its Debt To Imagination. Goethe Did Not Believe That A Great Naturalist Could Exist Without This Faculty.

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.

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.

The Moment We Indulge Our Affections, The Earth Is Metamorphosed, There Is No Winter And No Night; All Tragedies, All Ennui S, Vanish, All Duties Even.

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

A Hero Is No Braver Than An Ordinary Man, But He Is Brave Five Minutes Longer.

There Is No Great And No Small To The Soul That Maketh All.

To Say Then, The Majority Are Wicked, Means No Malice, No Bad Heart In The Observer, But, Simply That The Majority Are Unripe, Andhave Not Yet Come To Themselves, Do Not Yet Know Their Opinion.

Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit.

There Can Be No High Civility Without A Deep Morality, Though It May Not Always Call Itself By That Name.

A Man's Growth Is Seen In The Successive Choirs Of His Friends.

We Are Not Free To Use Today, Or To Promise Tomorrow, Because We Are Already Mortgaged To Yesterday.

You Need Someone Who Can Inspire You To Be What You Know You Can Be

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

The Earth Is A Machine Which Yields Almost Gratuitous Service To Every Application Of Intellect. Every Plant Is A Manufacturer Of Soil. In The Stomach Of The Plant Development Begins. The Tree Can Draw On The Whole Air, The Whole Earth, On All The Rolling Main. The Plant Is All Suction-pipe,--imbibing From The Ground By Its Root, From The Air By Its Leaves, With All Its Might.

No Member Of A Crew Is Praised For The Rugged Individuality Of His Rowing.

Great Country, Diminutive Minds. America Is Formless, Has No Terrible And No Beautiful Condensation.

Every Moment Instructs, And Every Object; For Wisdom Is Infused Into Every Form. It Has Been Poured Into Us As Blood; It Convulsed Us As Pain; It Slid Into Us As Pleasure; It Enveloped Us In Dull, Melancholy Days, Or In Days Of Cheerful Labor; We Did Not Guess Its Essence Until After Long Time.

Do Not You See That Every Misfortune Is Misconduct; That Every Honour Is Desert; That Every Effort Is An Insolence Of Your Own?...you Carry Your Fortune In Your Own Hand.

If The Whole Of History Is In One Man, It Is All To Be Explained From Individual Experience.

I Remember The Thought Which Occurred To Me When Some Ingenious And Spiritual Foreigners Came To America, Was, Have You Been Victimized In Being Brought Hither?--or, Prior To That, Answer Me This, "are You Victimizable?

All My Hurts My Garden Spade Can Heal.

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.

A Friend, Therefore, Is A Sort Of Paradox In Nature. I Who Alone Am, I Who See Nothing In Nature Whose Existence I Can Affirm With Equal Evidence To My Own, Behold Now The Semblance Of My Being, In All Its Height, Variety, And Curiosity, Reiterated In A Foreign Form; So That A Friend May Well Be Reckoned The Masterpiece Of Nature.

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.

God Knows That All Sorts Of Gentlemen Knock At The Door; But Whenever Used In Strictness And With Any Emphasis, The Name Will Be Found To Point At Original Energy.

Tobacco, Coffee, Alcohol, Hashish, Prussic Acid, Strychnine, Are Weak Dilutions. The Surest Poison Is Time.

The Wonder Is Always New That Any Sane Man Can Be A Sailor.

Solvency Is Maintained By Means Of A National Debt, On The Principle, "if You Will Not Lend Me The Money, How Can I Pay You?"

And Striving To Be Man, The Worm Mounts Through All The Spires Of Form.

The Truth, The Hope Of Any Time, Must Always Be Sought In Minorities.

Use What Language You Will, You Can Never Say Anything But What You Are.

We Must Not Tamper With The Organic Motion Of The Soul.

Artists Must Be Sacrificed To Their Art.

Happy Will That House Be In Which The Relations Are Formed From Character; After The Highest, And Not After The Lowest Order; The House In Which Character Marries, And Not Confusion And A Miscellany Of Unavowable Motives.

I Always Seem To Suffer Some Loss Of Faith On Entering Cities.

Nature And Books Belong To The Eyes That See Them.

The Intellect Searches Out The Absolute Order Of Things As They Stand In The Mind Of God, And Without The Colors Of Affection. The Intellectual And The Active Powers Seem To Succeed Each Other, And The Exclusive Activity Of The One Generates The Exclusive Activity Of The Other. There Is Something Unfriendly In Each To The Other, But They Are Like The Alternate Periods Of Feeding And Working In Animals; Each Prepares And Will Be Followed By The Other.

Nothing Can Be Colder Than His Head, When The Lightnings Of His Imagination Are Playing In The Sky.

The Finest Wits Have Their Sediment.

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.

Beauty Is The Virtue Of The Body As Virtue Is The Beauty Of The Soul

Nature Arms Each Man With Some Faculty Which Enables Him To Do Easily Some Feat Impossible To Any Other, And Thus Makes Him Necessary To Society. ... Society Can Never Prosper, But Must Always Be Bankrupt, Until Every Man Does That Which He Was Created To Do.

Life Is Not Intellectual Or Critical, But Sturdy. Its Chief Good Is For Well-mixed People Who Can Enjoy What They Find, Without Question.

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.

Solitude Is Naught And Society Is Naught. Alternate Them And The Good Of Each Is Seen.

Delicious Is A Just And Firm Encounter Of Two In A Thought, In A Feeling.

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.

Out Of Plato Come All Things That Are Still Written And Debated About Among Men Of Thought.

The Hero Is Suffered To Be Himself.

What Can We See, Read, Acquire, But Ourselves. Take The Book, My Friend, And Read Your Eyes Out, You Will Never Find There What I Find.

Let Me Admonish You, First Of All, To Go Alone; To Refuse The Good Models, Even Those Which Are Sacred In The Imagination Of Men, And Dare To Love God Without Mediator Or Veil.

The Adventitious Beauty Of Poetry May Be Felt In The Greater Delight With A Verse Given In A Happy Quotation Than In The Poem.

He Then Learns That In Going Down Into The Secrets Of His Own Mind, He Has Descended Into The Secrets Of All Minds.

The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zigzag Line Of A Hundred Tacks. See The Line From A Sufficient Distance, And It Straightens Itself To The Average Tendency. Your Genuine Action Will Explain Itself, And Will Explain Your Other Genuine Actions. Your Conformity Explains Nothing. Act Singly, And What You Have Already Done Singly Will Justify You Now. Greatness Appeals To The Future.

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.

Nature Is Reckless Of The Individual. When She Has Points To Carry, She Carries Them.

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

Genius Detects Through The Fly, Through The Caterpillar, Through The Grub, Through The Egg, The Constant Individual; Through Countless Individuals The Fixed Species; Through Many Species The Genus; Through All Genera The Steadfast Type; Through All The Kingdoms Of Organized Life The Eternal Unity. Nature Is A Mutable Cloud Which Is Always And Never The Same.

The Great Object Of Education Should Be Commensurate With The Object Of Life. It Should Be A Moral One; To Teach Self-trust: To Inspire The Youthful Man With An Interest In Himself; With A Curiosity Touching His Own Nature; To Acquaint Him With The Resources Of His Mind, And To Teach Him That There Is All His Strength.

The Hues Of The Opal, The Light Of The Diamond, Are Not To Be Seen If The Eye Is Too Near.

Man Is The Broken Giant, And In All His Weakness Both His Body And His Mind Are Invigorated By Habits Of Conversation With Nature.

What We Have Learned From Other Becomes Our Own Reflection.

For What Avail The Plough Or Sail, Or Land Or Life, If Freedom Fail?

The Good Spirit Never Cared For The Colleges, And Though All Men And Boys Were Now Drilled In Greek, Latin, And Mathematics, It Had Quite Left These Shells High On The Beach, And Was Creating And Feeding Other Matters [science] At Other Ends Of The World.

A Man Is The Facade Of A Temple Wherein All Wisdom And All Good Abide.

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

I Can Believe A Miracle Because I Can Raise My Own Arm. I Can Believe A Miracle Because I Can Remember. I Can Believe It Because I Can Speak And Be Understood By You.

After You Have Pumped Your Brains For Thoughts And Verses, There Is A Better Poetry Hinted In Whistling A Tune On Your Walk.

Trending Author

Category