Background Image

...

The Aspect Of Nature Is Devout. Like The Figure Of Jesus, She Stands With Bended Head, And Hands Folded Upon The Breast. The Happiest Man Is He Who Learns From Nature The Lesson Of Worship.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Aspect Of Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

The Aspect Of Nature Is Devout. Like The Figure Of Jesus, She Stands With Bended Head, And Hands Folded Upon The Breast. The Happiest Man Is He Who Learns From Nature The Lesson Of Worship.

Views: 45770

Topic

More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

The Rule For Hospitality And Irish "help," Is, To Have The Same Dinner Every Day Throughout The Year. At Last, Mrs. O'shaughnessylearns To Cook It To A Nicety, The Host Learns To Carve It, And The Guests Are Well Served.

A Man In A Cave Or In A Camp, A Nomad, Will Die With No More Estate Than The Wolf Or The Horse Leaves.

We Know Truth When We See It, From Opinion, As We Know When We Are Awake That We Are Awake.

A Poem, A Sentence, Causes Us To See Ourselves. I Be, And I See My Being, At The Same Time.

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

The Time Is Coming When All Men Will See That The Gift Of God To The Soul Is Not A Vaunting, Overpowering, Excluding Sanctity, Buta Sweet, Natural Goodness, A Goodness Like Thine And Mine, And That So Invites Thine And Mine To Be And To Grow.

Everything In Our World, Even A Drop Of Dew, Is A Microcosm Of The Universe.

That Man Is Idle Who Can Do Something Better.

We Are Not Very Much To Blame For Our Bad Marriages. We Live Amid Hallucinations, And Especial Trap Is Laid To Trip Up Our Feet With, And All Are Tripped Up First Or Last. But The Mighty Mother, Who Had Been So Sly With Us, As If She Felt She Owed Us Some Indemnity, Insinuates Into The Pandora Box Of Marriage Some Deep And Serious Benefits, And Some Great Joys.

Wisdom Is Not Found With Those Who Dwell At Their Ease; Rather Nature, When She Adds Brain, Adds Difficulty.

No One Can Cheat You Out Of Ultimate Success But Yourself.

From Washington, Proverbially "the City Of Distances," Through All Its Cities, States, And Territories, It Is A Country Of Beginnings, Of Projects, Of Designs, And Expectations.

A Man Must Be In Sympathy With Society Around Him, Or Else, Not Wish To Be In Sympathy With It. If Neither Of These Two, He Must Be Wretched.

A Man Is Related To All Nature.

Hence, The Less Government We Have, The Better,--the Fewer Laws, And The Less Confided Power. The Antidote To This Abuse Of Formalgovernment, Is, The Influence Of Private Character, The Growth Of The Individual; The Appearance Of The Principal To Supersede The Proxy; The Appearance Of The Wise Man, Of Whom The Existing Government, Is, It Must Be Owned, But A Shabby Imitation.

In Every Work Of Genius We Recognize Our Own Rejected Thoughts; They Come Back To Us With A Certain Alienated Majesty.

Therefore All Just Persons Are Satisfied With Their Own Praise. They Refuse To Explain Themselves, And Are Content That New Actions Should Do Them That Office. They Believe That We Communicate Without Speech, And Above Speech, And That No Right Action Of Ours Is Quite Unaffecting To Our Friends, At Whatever Distance; For The Influence Of Action Is Not To Be Measured By Miles.

Nature Ever Faithful Is To Such As Trust Her Faithfulness.

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.

The Highest Proof Of Civility Is That The Whole Public Action Of The State Is Directed On Securing The Greatest Good Of The Greatest Number.

It Is Plain That There Is No Separate Essence Called Courage, No Cup Or Cell In The Brain, No Vessel In The Heart Containing Drops Or Atoms That Make Or Give This Virtue; But It Is The Right Or Healthy State Of Every Man, When He Is Free To Do That Which Is Constitutional To Him To Do.

There Is No History; Only Biography.

Conversation In Society Is Found To Be On A Platform So Low As To Exclude Science, The Saint, And The Poet.

Ever Fresh The Broad Creation, A Divine Improvisation, From The Heart Of God Proceeds, A Single Will, A Million Deeds.

It Seems To Be A Rule Of Wisdom Never To Rely On Memory Alone.

I Like Sayers Of No Better Than I Like Sayers Of Yes.

The State Of Society Is One In Which The Members Have Suffered Amputation From The Trunk, And Strut About So Many Walking Monsters,—a Good Finger, A Neck, A Stomach, An Elbow, But Never A Man.

The Dogma Of The Mystic Offices Of Christ Being Dropped, And He Standing On His Genius As A Moral Teacher, 'tis Impossible To Maintain The Old Emphasis Of His Personality; And It Recedes, As All Persons Must, Before The Sublimity Of The Moral Laws.

Why Has My Motley Diary No Jokes? Because It Is A Soliloquy And Every Man Is Grave Alone.

A Friend Is A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere. Before Him I May Think Aloud. I Am Arrived At Last In The Presence Of A Man So Real And Equal, That I May Drop Even Those Undermost Garments Of Dissimulation, Courtesy, And Second Thought, Which Men Never Put Off, And May Deal With Him With The Simplicity And Wholeness With Which One Chemical Atom Meets Another.

Give Me Health And A Day, And I Will Make The Pomp Of Emperors Ridiculous.

Enthusiasm Is The Engine Of Success.

Congratulations

No Change Of Circumstances Can Repair A Defect Of Character.

Find The Journey's End In Every Step.

An Ounce Of Action Is Worth A Ton Of Theory.

Science Always Goes Abreast With The Just Elevation Of The Man, Keeping Step With Religion And Metaphysics; Or, The State Of Science Is An Index Of Our Self-knowledge.

Each Man Has His Own Vocation. The Talent Is The Call. There Is One Direction In Which All Space Is Open To Him. He Has Faculties Silently Inviting Him Thither To Endless Exertion. He Is Like A Ship In The River; He Runs Against Obstructions On Every Side But One; On That Side All Obstruction Is Taken Away, And He Sweeps Serenely Over A Deepening Channel Into An Infinite Sea.

No Institution Will Be Better Than The Institutor.

Improve Your Spare Moments And They Will Become The Brightest Gems In Your Life.

I Wish To Write Such Rhymes As Shall Not Suggest A Restraint, But Contrariwise The Wildest Freedom.

The Riddle Of The Age Has For Each A Private Solution.

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 Is A Greater Joy To See The Author's Author, Than Himself.

Good Churches Are Not Built By Bad Men; At Least, There Must Be Probity And Enthusiasm Somewhere In The Society. These Minsters Were Neither Built Nor Filled By Atheists.

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.

There Is A Persuasion In The Soul Of Man That He Is Here For Cause, That He Was Put Down In This Place By The Creator To Do The Work For Which He Inspires Him, That Thus He Is An Overmatch For All Antagonists That Could Combine Against Him.

There Is The Illusion Of Time, Which Is Very Deep; Who Has Disposed Of It? Mor Come To The Conviction That What Seems The Succession Of Thought Is Only The Distribution Of Wholes Into Causal Series.

We Over-estimate The Conscience Of Our Friend. His Goodness Seems Better Than Our Goodness, His Nature Finer, His Temptations Less. Everything That Is His,--his Name, His Form, His Dress, Books, And Instruments,--fancy Enhances. Our Own Thought Sounds New And Larger From His Mouth.

I Wish The Days To Be As Centuries, Loaded, Fragrant. Now We Reckon Them As Bank-days, By Some Debt Which Is To Be Paid Us, Or Which We Are To Pay, Or Some Pleasure We Are To Taste.

Women See Better Than Men. Men See Lazily, If They Do Not Expect To Act. Women See Quite Without Any Wish To Act.

Silence Is A Solvent That Destroys Personality, And Gives Us Leave To Be Great And Universal.

The Height, The Deity Of Man Is To Be Self-sustained, To Need No Gift, No Foreign Force. Society Is Good When It Does Not Violate Me, But Best When It Is Likest To Solitude.

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

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

Earth Proudly Wears The Parthenon As The Best Gem Upon Her Zone.

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

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.

There Is Always Room For A Person Of Force And They Make Room For Many.

Draw, If Thou Canst, The Mystic Line, Severing Rightly His From Thine, Which Is Human, Which Divine.

Society Never Advances. It Recedes As Fast On One Side As It Gains On The Other. It Undergoes Continual Changes: It Is Barbarous, It Is Civilized, It Is Rich, It Is Scientific; But This Change Is Not Amelioration. For Every Thing That Is Given, Something Else Is Taken. Society Acquires New Arts And Loses Old Instincts.

Look Out! Behind You!

Our Condition As Men Is Risky And Ticklish Enough. One Can Not Be Sure Of Himself And His Fortune An Hour, But He May Be Whisked Off Into Some Pitiable Or Ridiculous Plight.

It Is For Want Of Self-culture That The Superstition Of Travelling, Whose Idols Are Italy, England, Egypt, Retains Its Fascinationfor All Educated Americans.

It Is Vain To Keep A Secret From One Who Has A Right To Know It. It Will Tell Itself.

The Heroic Cannot Be The Common, Nor The Common The Heroic.

The Louder He Talked Of His Honor, The Faster We Counted Our Spoons.

Too Busy With The Crowded Hour To Fear To Live Or Die.

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

Criticism Is Infested With The Cant Of Materialism, Which Assumes That Manual Skill And Activity Is The First Merit Of All Men, And Disparages Such As Say And Do Not, Overlooking The Fact, That Some Men, Namely, Poets, Are Natural Sayers, Sent Into The World To The End Of Expression, And Confounds Them With Those Whose Province Is Action, But Who Quit To Imitate The Sayers.

Is Not, Indeed, Every Man A Student, And Do Not All Things Exist For The Student's Behoof?

Truth, And Goodness, And Beauty, Are But Different Faces Of The Same All

Different Faces

Without Looking, Then, To Those Extraordinary Social Influences Which Are Now Acting In Precisely This Direction, But Only At Whatis Inevitably Doing Around Us, I Think We Must Regard The Land As A Commanding And Increasing Power On The Citizen, The Sanative And Americanizing Influence, Which Promises To Disclose New Virtues For Ages To Come.

A Child Reminds Us That Playtime Is An Essential Part Of Our Daily Routine.

Preaching Is The Expression Of Moral Sentiments Applied To The Duties Of Life.

Democracy Is Morose, And Runs To Anarchy.

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 Man Thoroughly Understands A Truth Until He Has Contended Against It.

It Is Easy To Live For Others, Everybody Does. I Call On You To Live For Yourself.

Every Word Was Once A Poem. Every New Relation Is A New Word.

The New Statement Will Comprise The Skepticisms, As Well As The Faiths Of Society, And Out Of Unbeliefs A Creed Shall Be Formed. For, Skepticisms Are Not Gratuitous Or Lawless, But Are Limitations Of The Affirmative Statement, And The New Philosophy Must Take Them In, And Make Affirmations Outside Of Them, Just As Much As Must Include The Oldest Beliefs.

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

Live In The Sunshine.

In Like Manner The Effect Of Every Action Is Measured By The Depth Of The Sentiment From Which It Proceeds. The Great Man Knew Not That He Was Great. It Took A Century Or Two For That Fact To Appear. What He Did, He Did, He Did Because He Must; It Was The Most Natural Thing In The World, And Grew Out Of The Circumstances Of The Moment.

With Most Men, Scarce A Link Of Memory Holds Yesterday And To-day Together.

Romeo, Of Dead, Should Be Cut Up Into Little Stars To Make The Heavens Fine. Life, With This Pair, Has No Other Aim, Asks No More,than Juliet,--than Romeo.

Sitting Back In The Evening, Stargazing And Stroking Your Dog, Is An Infallible Remedy.

Great Geniuses Have The Shortest Biographies. Their Cousins Can Tell You Nothing About Them. They Lived In Their Writings, And Sotheir House And Street Life Was Trivial And Commonplace. If You Would Know Their Tastes And Complexions, The Most Admiring Of Their Readers Most Resembles Them.

I Have Just Been Conversing With One Man, To Whom No Weight Of Adverse Experience Will Make It For A Moment Appear Impossible That Thousands Of Human Beings Might Exercise Towards Each Other The Grandest And Simplest Sentiments, As Well As A Knot Of Friends, Or A Pair Of Lovers.

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

This Knot Of Nature Is So Well Tied That Nobody Was Ever Cunning Enough To Find The Two Ends.

Where There Is No Vision A People Perish.

Whenever A Mind Is Simple And Receives An Old Wisdom, Old Things Pass Away,--means, Teachers, Texts, Temples Fall; It Lives Now, And Absorbs Past And Future Into Present Hour. All Things Are Made Sacred By Relation To It,--one As Much As Another.

Our Expense Is Almost All For Conformity. It Is For Cake That We Run In Debt; 'tis Not The Intellect, Not The Heart, Not Beauty, Not Worship, That Costs So Much.

The Babe In Arms Is A Channel Through Which The Energies We Call Fate, Love, And Reason Visibly Stream.

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

Build, Therefore, Your Own World. As Fast As You Conform Your Life To The Pure Idea In Your Mind, That Will Unfold It's Great Proportions.

We Pass For What We Are.

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

Power Obeys Reality, And Not Appearances; Power Is According To Quality, And Not Quantity.

I Suppose You Could Never Explain To The Most Ingenous Molusk That Such A Creature As A Whale Existed.

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

He Needs No Library, For He Has Not Done Thinking; No Church, For He Is Himself A Prophet; No Statute Book, For He Hath The Lawgiver; No Money, For He Is Value Itself; No Road, For He Is At Home Where He Is.

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 Feel Some Unwillingness To Quit The Remembrance Of The Past. With All The Hope Of The New I Feel That We Are Leaving The Old.

Friends Are Like Spaghetti, They Should Stick Together. The Only Way To Have A Friend Is To Be One.

It Is Very Hard To Be Simple Enough To Be Good.

But If A Man Would Be Alone, Let Him Look At The Stars. The Rays That Come From Those Heavenly Worlds, Will Separate Between Him And Vulgar Things.

The Gothic Cathedral Is A Blossoming In Stone Subdued By The Insatiable Demand Of Harmony In Man.

I Suffer Whenever I See That Common Sight Of A Parent Or Senior Imposing His Opinion And Way Of Thinking And Being On A Young Soul To Which They Are Totally Unfit. Cannot We Let People Be Themselves, And Enjoy Life In Their Own Way? You Are Trying To Make That Man Another You. One's Enough.

I Please Myself With The Graces Of The Winter Scenery, And Believe That We Are As Much Touched By It As By The Genial Influences Of Summer.

And So The Reliance On Property, Including The Reliance On Governments Which Protect It, Is The Want Of Self-reliance.

...what Torments Of Pain Have You Endured That Haven't As Yet Arrived? And May Never!

Every Person Has His Or Her Own Vocation-talent Is The Call.

We But Half Express Ourselves, And Are Ashamed Of That Divine Idea Which Each Of Us Represents.

We May Climb Into The Thin And Cold Realm Of Pure Geometry And Lifeless Science, Or Sink Into That Of Sensation. Between These Extremes Is The Equator Of Life, Of Thought, Or Spirit, Or Poetry,--a Narrow Belt.

Can Anybody Remember When The Times Were Not Hard And Money Not Scarce?

Every Ship Is A Romantic Object, Except That We Sail In. Embark, And The Romance Quits Our Vessel, And Hangs On Every Other Sail In The Horizon.

Shall We Then Judge A Country By The Majority, Or By The Minority? By The Minority, Surely.

An Individual Is An Encloser. Time And Space, Liberty And Necessity, Truth And Thought, Are Left At Large No Longer.

To Fill The Hour; That Is Happiness To Fill The Hour, And Leave No Crevice For A Repentance Or An Approval.

In All Conversation Between Two Persons, Tacit Reference Is Made, As To A Third Party, To A Common Nature. That Third Party Or Common Nature Is Not Social; It Is Impersonal; Is God.

There Is No Teaching Until The Pupil Is Brought Into The Same State Or Principle In Which You Are; A Transfusion Takes Place; He Is You, And You Are He; Then Is A Teaching; And By No Unfriendly Chance Or Bad Company Can He Ever Lose The Benefit.

Let The Realist Not Mind Appearances. Let Him Delegate To Others The Costly Courtesies And Decorations Of Social Life. The Virtuesare Economists, But Some Of The Vices Are Also. Thus, Next To Humility, I Have Noticed That Pride Is A Pretty Good Husband. A Good Pride Is, As I Reckon It, Worth From Five Hundred To Fifteen Hundred A Year.

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

Thus Inevitably Does The Universe Wear Our Color, And Every Object Fall Successively Into The Subject Itself. The Subject Exists, The Subject Enlarges; All Things Sooner Or Later Fall Into Place. As I Am, So I See; Use What Language We Will, We Can Never Say Anything But What We Are.

Europe Extends To The Alleghenies; America Lies Beyond.

All Substances The Cunning Chemist Time Melts Down Into That Liquor Of My Life.

Foolish Consistencies Are The Hobgoblins Of Small Minds!

We Are The Prisoners Of Ideas. They Catch Us Up For Moments Into Their Heaven, And So Fully Engage Us, That We Take No Thought Forthe Morrow, Gaze Like Children, Without An Effort To Make Them Our Own.

Behold The Sea, The Opaline, The Plentiful And Strong, Yet Beautiful As Is The Rose In June, Fresh As The Trickling Rainbow Of July; Sea Full Of Food, The Nourisher Of Kinds, Purger Of Earth, And Medicine Of Men; Creating A Sweet Climate By My Breath, Washing Out Harms And Griefs From Memory, And, In My Mathematic Ebb And Flow, Giving A Hint Of That Which Changes Not.

Every Great Man Is Unique.

All Men In The Abstract Are Just And Good.

A Farm Is A Good Thing, When It Begins And Ends With Itself, And Does Not Need A Salary, Or A Shop, To Eke It Out.

The Human Heart Concerns Us More Than The Poring Into Microscopes, And Is Larger Than Can Be Measured By The Pompous Figures Of The Astronomer.

Meet Your Failure Nobly, And It Will Not Differ From Success.

The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zigzag Line Of A Hundred Tacks.

The Borrower Runs In His Own Debt.

The Picture Waits For My Verdict; It Is Not To Command Me, But I Am To Settle Its Claim To Praise.

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

Dear To Us Are Those Who Love Us... But Dearer Are Those Who Reject Us As Unworthy, For They Add Another Life; They Build A Heaven Before Us Whereof We Had Not Dreamed, And Thereby Supply To Us New Powers Out Of The Recesses Of The Spirit, And Urge Us To New And Unattempted Performances.

Among The Multitude Of Scholars And Authors, We Feel No Hallowing Presence; We Are Sensible Of A Knack And Skill Rather Than Of Inspiration; They Have A Light, And Know Not Whence It Comes, And Call It Their Own; Their Talent Is Some Exaggerated Faculty, Some Overgrown Member, So That Their Strength Is A Disease.

We Never Touch But At Points.

Must We Always Talk For Victory, And Never Once For Truth, For Comfort, And Joy?

Comfort And Joy

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

The World Is Full Of Judgment-days, And Into Every Assembly That A Man Enters, In Every Action He Attempts, He Is Gauged And Stamped.

The Sun Shines And Warms And Lights Us And We Have No Curiosity To Know Why This Is So; But We Ask The Reason Of All Evil, Of Pain, And Hunger, And Mosquitoes And Silly People.

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

There Will Be An Agreement In Whatever Variety Of Actions, So They Be Each Honest And Natural In Their Hour. For Of One Will, The Actions Will Be Harmonious, However Unlike They Seem. These Varieties Are Lost Sight Of At A Little Distance, At A Little Height Of Thought. One Tendency Unites Them All. 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.

Life Loiters At The Book's First Page,-- Ah! Could We Turn The Leaf.

Genius Appeals To The Future.

There Are Dull And Bright, Sacred And Profane, Coarse And Fine Egotists. It Is A Disease That, Like Influenza, Falls On All Constitutions. In The Distemper Known To Physicians As Chorea, The Patient Sometimes Turns Round, And Continues To Spin Slowly In One Spot. Is Egotism A Metaphysical Varioloid Of This Malady?

Though Love Repine, And Reason Chafe, There Came A Voice Without Reply,- "'tis Man's Perdition To Be Safe, When For The Truth He Ought To Die."

The Charming Landscape Which I Saw This Morning Is Indubitably Made Up Of Some Twenty Or Thirty Farms. Miller Owns This Field, Locke That, And Manning The Woodland Beyond. But None Of Them Owns The Landscape. There Is Property In The Horizon Which No Man Has But He Whose Eye Can Integrate All Parts, That Is, The Poet. This Is The Best Part Of These Men's Farms, Yet To This Their Warranty-deeds Give No Title.

A Beautiful Woman Is A Practical Poet.

As We Grow Old, The Beauty Steals Inward.

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

A Great Man Stands On God. A Small Man On A Great Man.

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

That Is Ever The Difference Between The Wise And The Unwise: The Latter Wonders At What Is Unusual; The Wise Man Wonders At The Usual.

Time, Which Shows So Vacant, Indivisible, And Divine In Its Coming, Is Slit And Peddled Into Trifles And Tatters. A Door Is To Bepainted, A Lock To Be Repaired. I Want Wood, Or Oil, Or Meal, Or Salt; The House Smokes, Or I Have A Headache; Then The Tax; And An Affair To Be Transacted With A Man Without Heart Or Brains; And The Stinging Recollection Of An Injurious Or Very Awkward Word,--these Eat Up The Hours.

If You Criticize A Fine Genius, The Odds Are That You Are Out Of Your Reckoning, And, Instead Of The Poet, Are Censuring Your Owncaricature Of Him.

Beware When The Great God Lets Loose A Thinker On This Planet. Then All Things Are At Risk. It Is As When A Conflagration Has Broken Out In A Great City, And No Man Knows What Is Safe, Or Where It Will End.

I Do Not Hesitate To Read. All Good Books In Translations. What Is Really Best In Any Book Is Translatable-any Real Insight Or Broad Human Sentiment.

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

What Is Addressed To Us For Contemplation Does Not Threaten Us, But Makes Us Intellectual Beings.

Win As If You Were Used To It, Lose As If You Enjoyed It For A Change.

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

Every Individual Nature Has Its Own Beauty. One Is Struck In Every Company, At Every Fireside, With The Riches Of Nature, When He Hears So Many New Tones, All Musical, Sees In Each Person Original Manners, Which Have A Proper And Peculiar Charm, And Reads New Expressions Of Face. He Perceives That Nature Has Laid For Each The Foundations Of A Divine Building, If The Soul Will Build Thereon.

There Is An Optical Illusion About Every Person We Meet.

Optical Illusions

Transcendentalism

Think Me Not Unkind And Rude That I Walk Alone In Grove And Glen; I Go To The God Of The Wood To Fetch His Word To Men.

It Is The Last Lesson Of Modern Science, That The Highest Simplicity Of Structure Is Produced, Not By Few Elements, But By The Highest Complexity.

The Man (or Woman) Who Can Make Hard Things Easy Is The Educator.

But To Most Of Us Society Shows Not Its Face And Eye, But Its Side And Back. To Stand In True Relations With Men In A False Age Isworth A Fit Of Insanity, Is It Not?

Nature Is Upheld By Antagonism. Passions, Resistance, Danger, Are Educators. We Acquire The Strength We Have Overcome.

Our Eyes Are Holden That We Cannot See Things That Stare Us In The Face, Until The Hour Arrives When The Mind Is Ripened; Then We Behold Them, And The Time When We Saw Them Not Is Like A Dream.

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

It Is A Tie Between Men To Have Read The Same Book.

It Is Doubtless A Vice To Turn One's Eyes Inward Too Much, But I Am My Own Comedy And Tragedy.

Sorrow Makes Us All Children Again.

People Who Know How To Act Are Never Preachers.

The Victories Of Character Are Instant, And Victories For All.

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

The Objection To Conforming To Usages That Have Become Dead To You Is, That It Scatters Your Force.

The Tempered Light Of The Woods Is Like A Perpetual Morning.

God Had Infinite Time To Give Us.... He Cut It Up Into A Near Succession Of New Mornings, And, With Each, Therefore, A New Idea, New Inventions, And New Applications.

He Who Is In Love Is Wise And Is Becoming Wiser.

Society Always Consists In The Greatest Part, Of Young And Foolish Persons.

So In Accepting The Leading Of The Sentiments, It Is Not What We Believe Concerning The Immortality Of The Soul, Or The Like, But The Universal Impulse To Believe, That Is The Material Circumstance, And Is The Principal Fact In This History Of The Globe.

It Is Hard To Go Beyond Your Public. If They Are Satisfied With Cheap Performance, You Will Not Easily Arrive At Better. If They Know What Is Good, And Require It. You Will Aspire And Burn Until You Achieve It. But From Time To Time, In History, Men Are Born A Whole Age Too Soon.

The Sun Is The Sole Inconsumable Fireand God Is The Sole Inexhaustible Giver.

Men Are So Charmed With Valor That They Have Pleased Themselves With Being Called Lions, Leopards, Eagles And Dragons, From The Animals Contemporary With Us In The Geologic Formations.

What We Do Not Call Education Is More Precious Than That Which We Call So. We Form No Guess, At The Time Of Receiving A Thought, Of Its Comparative Value. And Education Often Wastes Its Effort In Attempts To Thwart And Balk This Natural Magnetism, Which Is Sure To Select What Belongs To It.

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

Conservatism, Ever More Timorous And Narrow, Disgusts The Children, And Drives Them For A Mouthful Of Fresh Air Into Radicalism.

Englands Genius Filled All Measureof Heart And Soul, Of Strength And Pleasure,gave To The Mind Its Emperor,and Life Was Larger Than Before:nor Sequent Centuries Could Hitorbit And Sum Of Shakespeares Wit. The Men Who Lived With Him Becamepoets, For The Air Was Fame.

Come Out Of The Azure. Love The Day. Do Not Leave The Sky Out Of Your Landscape.

We Legislate Against Forestalling And Monopoly; We Would Have A Common Granary For The Poor; But The Selfishness Which Hoards Thecorn For High Prices, Is The Preventative Of Famine; And The Law Of Self-preservation Is Surer Policy Than Any Legislation Can Be.

I Like People Who Can Do Things

Necessity Does Everything Well.

Trending Author

John Cassavetes

Category