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

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Boxer's Ring Is

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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Our Culture, Therefore, Must Not Omit The Arming Of The Man. Let Him Hear In Season, That He Is Born Into The State Of War, And That The Commonwealth And His Own Well-being Require That He Should Not Go Dancing In The Weeds Of Peace, But Warned, Self- Collected, And Neither Defying Nor Dreading The Thunder, Let Him Take Both Reputation And Life In His Hand, And, With Perfect Urbanity, Dare The Gibbet And The Mob By The Absolute Truth Of His Speech, And The Rectitude Of His Behaviour.

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

People That Seem So Glorious Are All Show; Underneath They Are Like Everyone Else.

The Constructive Intellect [genius] Produces Thoughts, Sentences, Poems, Plans, Designs, Systems. It Is The Generation Of The Mind, The Marriage Of Thought With Nature.

Truth Is Handsomer Than The Affectation Of Love. Your Goodness Must Have Some Edge To It, Else It Is None.

Heroism Feels And Never Reasons, And Therefore Is Always Right.

In Spite Of Warnings, Change Rarely Occurs Until The Status Quo Becomes More Painful Than Change. People Seem Not To See That Their Opinion Of The World Is Also A Confession Of Their Character.

Life Is Wasted In The Necessary Preparation Of Finding What Is The True Way, And We Die Just As We Enter It.

A Poet Is No Rattlebrain, Saying What Comes Uppermost, And, Because He Says Every Thing, Saying, At Last, Something Good; But A Heart In Unison With His Time And Country. There Is Nothing Whimsical Or Fantastic In His Production, But Sweet And Sad Earnest, Freighted With The Weightiest Convictions, And Pointed With The Most Determined Aim Which Any Man Or Class Knows Of In His Times.

By Persisting In Your Path, Though You Forfeit The Little, You Gain The Great.

Had I But Written As Many Odes In Praise Of Muhammad And Ali As I Have Composed For King Mahmud, They Would Have Showered A Hundred Blessings On Me.

"though Many Painters And Sculptors Talk Glibly Of "going In For Photography," You Will Find That Very Few Of Them Can Ever Make A Picture By Photography; They Lack The Science, Technical Knowledge, And Above All The Practice. Most People Think They Can Play Tennis, Shoot, Write Novels, And Photograph As Well As Any Other Person - Until They Try."

The Crime Which Bankrupts Men And Nations Is That Of Turning Aside From One's Main Purpose To Serve A Job Here And There.

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

Art Is Evidence Of Our Most Creative Moment.

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.

Every Great And Commanding Movement In The Annals Of The World Is Due To The Triumph Of Enthusiasm. Nothing Great Was Ever Achieved Without It

Enthusiasm For Life

We Are Disgusted By Gossip; Yet It Is Of Importance To Keep The Angels In Their Proprieties.

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.

If A Man Carefully Examine His Thoughts He Will Be Surprised To Find How Much He Lives In The Future. His Well-being Is Always Ahead. Such A Creature Is Probably Immortal.

When The Act Of Reflection Takes Place In The Mind, When We Look At Ourselves In The Light Of Thought, We Discover That Our Life Is Embosomed In Beauty.

We Lie In The Lap Of Immense Intelligence, Which Makes Us Receivers Of Its Truth And Organ Of Its Activity. When We Discern Justice, When We Discern Truth, We Do Nothing By Ourselves, But Allow A Passage To Its Beams. If We Ask Whence This Comes, If We Seek To Pry Into The Soul That Causes, All Philosophy Is At Fault. Its Presence Or Its Absence Is All We Can Affirm.

The Religions Are Obsolete When The Reforms Do Not Proceed From Them.

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.

One Idea Lights A Thousand Candles.

Be A Gift And A Benediction.

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.

Yet These Uneasy Pleasures And Fine Pains Are For Curiosity, And Not For Life.

Great Genial Power, One Would Almost Say, Consists In Not Being Original At All; In Being Altogether Receptive; In Letting The World Do All, And Suffering The Spirit Of The Hour To Pass Unobstructed Through The Mind.

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

Do You Love Me? Means At Last Do You See The Same Truth I See? If You Do, We Are Happy Together; But When Presently One Of Us Passes Into The Perception Of A New Truth, We Are Divorced And The Force Of All Nature Cannot Hold Us To Each Other.

Belief Consists In Accepting The Affirmations Of The Soul; Unbelief In Denying Them.

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.

When I Have Attempted To Join Myself To Others By Services, It Proved An Intellectual Trick,-no More. They Eat Your Service Like Apples, And Leave You Out. But Love Them, And They Feel You, And Delight In You All The Time.

We Find Delight In The Beauty And Happiness Of Children That Makes The Heart Too Big For The Body.

The Forest Is My Loyal Friend A Delphic Shrine To Me.

O Friend, Never Strike Sail To A Fear! Come Into Port Greatly, Or Sail With God The Seas.

The Great Man, That Is, The Man Most Imbued With The Spirit Of The Time, Is The Impressionable Man.

The Wave Of Evil Washes All Our Institutions Alike.

The Line Of Beauty Is The Line Of Perfect Economy.

What Is It Men Love In Genius, But Its Infinite Hope, Which Degrades All It Has Done? Genius Counts All Its Miracles Poor And Short. Its Own Idea It Never Executed.

We Are Taught By Great Actions That The Universe Is The Property Of Every Individual In It.

There Was Never Anything That Did Not Proceed From A Thought.

Go Put Your Creed Into Your Deed, Nor Speak With Double Tongue.

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

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.

Imagination Is A Very High Sort Of Seeing.

The World Is A Divine Dream, From Which We May Presently Awake To The Glories And Certainties Of Day.

Heaven Walks Among Us Ordinarily Muffled In Such Triple Or Tenfold Disguises That The Wisest Are Deceived And No One Suspects The Days To Be Gods.

A Good Intention Clothes Itself With Sudden Power. When A God Wishes To Ride, Any Chip Or Pebble Will Bud And Shoot Out Winged Feet, And Serve Him For A Horse.

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.

Genius Is Always Sufficiently The Enemy Of Genius By Over Influence. The Literature Of Every Nation Bear Me Witness. The English Dramatic Poets Have Shakspearized Now For Two Hundred Years.

A New Degree Of Intellectual Power Seems Cheap At Any Price.

The Preamble Of Thought, The Transition Through Which It Passes From The Unconscious To The Conscious, Is Action. Only So Much Do I Know, As I Have Lived. Instantly We Know Whose Words Are Loaded With Life, And Whose Not.

A Strenuous Soul Hates Cheap Success. It Is The Ardor Of The Assailant That Makes The Vigor Of The Defendant.

A Scholar Is A Candle Which The Love And Desire Of All Men Will Light.

As We Refine, Our Checks Become Finer. If We Rise To Spiritual Culture, The Antagonism Takes A Spiritual Form.

For This Present, Hard Is The Fortune Of The Bard, Born Out Of Time; All His Accomplishment, From Nature's Utmost Treasure Spent, Booteth Not Him.

A Human Being Should Beware How He Laughs, For Then He Shows All His Faults.

I Could Better Eat With One Who Did Not Respect The Truth Or The Laws, Than With A Sloven And Unpresentable Person. Moral Qualities Rule The World, But At Shorter Distances, The Senses Are Despotic.

I Cannot Marry The Facts Of William Shakespeare To His Verse: Other Men Had Led Lives In Some Sort Of Keeping With Their Thought, But This Man Is In Wide Contrast.

Let Us Be Silent — So We May Hear The Whisper Of The Gods.

A Hero Is A Man Who Is Afraid To Run Away.

Great Believers Are Always Reckoned Infidels, Impracticable, Fantastic, Atheistic, And Really Men Of No Account. The Spiritualist Finds Himself Driven To Express His Faith By A Series Of Skepticisms.

Before A Leaf-bud Has Burst, Its Whole Life Acts; In The Full-blown Flower There Is No More; In The Leafless Root There Is No Less.

Necessity Does Everything Well. In Our Condition Of Universal Dependence, It Seems Heroic To Let The Petitioner Be The Judge Of His Necessity, And To Give All That Is Asked, Though At Great Inconvenience.

You Must Let Go Of A Thing For A New One To Come To You.

Nature Will Not Let Us Fret And Fume. She Does Not Like Our Benevolence Or Our Learning Much Better Than She Likes Our Frauds Andwars. When We Come Out Of The Caucus, Or The Bank, Or The Abolition-convention, Or The Temperance-meeting, Or The Transcendental Club, Into The Fields And Woods, She Says To Us, "so Hot? My Little Sir.

Music And Wine Are One.

As We Are, So We Do; And As We Do, So Is It Done To Us; We Are The Builders Of Our Fortunes.

The Dearest Events Are Summer-rain.

A Judge May Be A Farmer; But He Is Not To Geld His Own Pigs.

Many Eyes Go Through The Meadow, But Few See The Flowers In It

All The Great Ages Have Been Ages Of Belief.

Genius Is Intellect Constructive.

Solitude, The Safeguard Of Mediocrity, Is To Genius The Stern Friend

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.

Why Need I Volumes, If One Word Suffice?

The Gentleman Is A Man Of Truth.

The Rage For Road Building Is Beneficent For America, Where Vast Distance Is So Main A Consideration In Our Domestic Politics Andtrade, Inasmuch As The Great Political Promise Of The Invention Is To Hold The Union Staunch, Whose Days Already Seem Numbered By The Mere Inconvenience Of Transporting Representatives, Judges And Officers Across Such Tedious Distances Of Land And Water.

She Shows Us Only Surfaces, But She Is Million-fathoms Deep.

We Owe To Man Higher Succors Than Food And Fire. We Owe To Man, Man.

It Is Defeat Which Educates Us.

We Love Force And We Care Very Little How It Is Exhibited.

A Man Is Usually More Careful Of His Money Than He Is Of His Principles.

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

Write It On Your Heart That Every Day Is The Best Day In The Year. No Man Has Learned Anything Rightly, Until He Knows That Every Day Is Doomsday.

Inspirational Life

They Have Seen But Half The Universe Who Never Have Been Shown The House Of Pain.

Sole And Self-commanded Works, Fears Not Undermining Days, Grows By Decays, And, By The Famous Might That Lurks In Reaction And Recoil, Makes Flames To Freeze, And Ice To Boil.

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

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

I Am Always Insincere, As Always Knowing There Are Other Moods.

Talent May Frolic And Juggle; Genius Realizes And Adds.

The Eye Obeys Exactly The Action Of The Mind.

We Change Whether We Like It Or Not.

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.

Although This Garrulity Of Advising Is Born With Us, I Confess That Life Is Rather A Subject Of Wonder, Than Of Didactics. So Muchfate, So Much Irresistible Dictation From Temperament And Unknown Inspiration Enter Into It, That We Doubt We Can Say Anything Out Of Our Own Experience Whereby To Help Each Other.

Virtue Alone Is Sweet Society, It Keeps The Key To All Heroic Hearts, And Opens You A Welcome In Them All.

Astronomy Taught Us Our Insignificance In Nature.

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

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

The Life Of Labor Does Not Make Men, But Drudges.

The Affirmative Class Monopolize The Homage Of Mankind. They Originate And Execute All The Great Feats. What A Force Was Coiled Upin The Skull Of Napoleon!

Do Not Believe That Possibly You Can Escape The Reward Of Your Action.

Concentration Is The Secret Of Srength.

[gratitude Is] The Cheerfulness Of Wisdom.

Each Truth That A Writer Acquires Is A Lantern, Which He Turns Full On What Facts And Thoughts Lay Already In His Mind, And Behold, All The Mats And Rubbish Which Had Littered His Garret Become Precious. Every Trivial Fact In His Private Biography Becomes An Illustration Of This New Principle, Revisits The Day, And Delights All Men By Its Piquancy And New Charm.

Let Us Leave Hurry To Slaves.

Let Us Learn The Meaning Of Economy. Economy Is A High Human Office,--a Sacrament When Its Aim Is Grand, When It Is The Prudence Of Simple Tastes, When It Is Practised For Freedom Or For Love Or Devotion.

In Nature, All Is Useful, All Is Beautiful. It Is Therefore Beautiful, Because It Is Alive, Moving, Reproductive; It Is Thereforeuseful, Because It Is Symmetrical And Fair. Beauty Will Not Come At The Call Of A Legislature, Nor Will It Repeat In England Or America Its History In Greece. It Will Come, As Always, Unannounced, And Spring Up Between The Feet Of Brave And Earnest Men.

If The Vast And The Spiritual Are Omitted, So Are The Practical And The Moral.

The Englishman Who Has Lost His Fortune Is Said To Have Died Of A Broken Heart.

My Life Is For Itself And Not For A Spectacle.

Sincerity Is The Highest Complement You Can Pay

Sorrow Makes Us All Children Again.

Plato Says That The Punishment Which The Wise Suffer Who Refuse To Take Part In The Government, Is, To Live Under The Government Of Worse Men; And The Like Regret Is Suggested To All The Auditors, As The Penalty Of Abstaining To Speak,--that They Shall Hear Worse Orators Than Themselves.

Every Known Fact In Natural Science Was Divined By The Presentiment Of Somebody, Before It Was Actually Verified.

Native American

No Facts Are To Me Sacred; None Are Profane; I Simply Experiment, An Endless Seeker, With No Past At My Back.

We Boil At Different Degrees.

Being Different

Power Ceases In The Instant Of Repose; It Resides In The Moment Of Transition From A Past To A New State, In The Shooting Of The Gulf, In The Darting To An Aim.

Truly Speaking, It Is Not Instruction, But Provocation, That I Can Receive From Another Soul. What He Announces, I Must Find True In Me, Or Reject; And On His Word, Or As His Second, Be He Who He May, I Can Accept Nothing.

Oh, Be My Friend, And Teach Me To Be Thine!

Few People Know How To Take A Walk. The Qualifications Are Endurance, Plain Clothes, Old Shoes, An Eye For Nature, Good Humor, Vast Curiosity, Good Speech, Good Silence And Nothing Too Much.

The Refining Influence Is The Study Of Art, Which Is The Science Of Beauty; And I Find That Every Man Values Every Scrap Of Knowledge In Art, Every Observation Of His Own In It, Every Hint He Has Caught From Another. For The Laws Of Beauty Are The Beauty Of Beauty, And Give The Mind The Same Or A Higher Joy Than The Sight Of It Gives The Senses. The Study Of Art Is Of High Value To The Growth Of The Intellect.

How Much More The Seeker Of Abstract Truth, Who Needs Periods Of Isolation, And Rapt Concentration, And Almost A Going Out Of Thebody To Think!

As We Grow Old, The Beauty Steals Inward.

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?

What Forests Of Laurel We Bring, And The Tears Of Mankind, To Those Who Stood Firm Against The Opinion Of Their Contemporaries!

In The Uttermost Meaning Of The Words, Thought Is Devout, And Devotion Is Thought. Deep Calls Unto Deep.

The People Fancy They Hate Poetry, And They Are All Poets And Mystics.

There Is A Power In Love To Divine Another's Destiny Better Than That Other Can, And By Heroic Encouragements, Hold Him To His Task. What Has Friendship So Signal As Its Sublime Attraction To Whatever Virtue Is In Us?

In Our Large Cities, The Population Is Godless, Materialized,--no Bond, No Fellow-feeling, No Enthusiasm. These Are Not Men, But Hungers, Thirsts, Fevers, And Appetites Walking. How Is It People Manage To Live On,--so Aimless As They Are? After Their Peppercorn Aims Are Gained, It Seems As If The Lime In Their Bones Alone Held Them Together, And Not Any Worthy Purpose.

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.

Fate Is Nothing But The Deeds Committed In A Prior State Of Existence.

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.

For, Truly Speaking, Whoever Provokes Me To A Good Act Or Thought Has Given Me A Pledge Of His Fidelity To Virtue,--he Has Come Under The Bonds To Adhere To That Cause To Which We Are Jointly Attached.

Live In The Fields, And God Will Give You Lectures On Natural Philosophy Every Day.

The Secret Of Drunkenness Is, That It Insulates Us In Thought, Whilst It Unites Us In Feeling.

We Do What We Must, And Call It By The Best Names We Can, And Would Fain Have The Praise Of Having Intended The Result Which Ensues.

A System-grinder Hates The Truth.

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.

A Man Is A Method, A Progressive Arrangement; A Selecting Principle, Gathering His Like To Him; Wherever He Goes.

I Wish To Say What I Think And Feel Today, With The Proviso That Tomorrow Perhaps I Shall Contradict It All.

Spirit, That Made Those Heroes Dare To Die, And Leave Their Children Free, Bid Time And Nature Gently Spare The Shaft We Raise To Them And Thee.

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.

Daughter Of Time, The Hypocrite Days, Muffled And Dumb Like Barefoot Dervishes, And Marching Single In An Endless File, Bring Diadems And Fagots In Their Hands; To Each They Offer Gifts After His Will, Bread, Kingdom, Stars, And Sky That Holds Them All; I, In My Pleached Garden Watched The Pomp Forgot My Morning Wishes, Hastily Took A Few Herbs And Apples, And The Day Turned And Departed Silent. I Too Late Under Her Solemn Fillet Saw The Scorn.

But Every Jet Of Chaos Which Threatens To Exterminate Us Is Convertible By Intellect Into Wholesome Force. Fate Is Unpenetrated Causes.

All Science Is Transcendental Or Else Passes Away.

I Read The Other Day Some Verses Written By An Eminent Painter Which Were Original And Not Conventional.

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.

O Friend, Never Strike Sail To A Fear!

All The Mistakes I Make Arise From Forsaking My Own Station And Trying To See The Object From Another Person's Point Of View.

All History Is But The Lengthened Shadow Of A Great Man.

Go, Speed The Stars Of Thought On To Their Shining Goals; - The Sower Scatters Broad His Seed, The Wheat Thou Strew'st Be Souls.

We Shun The Rugged Battle Of Fate Where Strength Is Born.

As Long As Our Civilization Is Essentially One Of Property, Of Fences, Of Exclusiveness, It Will Be Mocked By Delusions.

We Do Not Live An Equal Life, But One Of Contrasts And Patchwork; Now A Little Joy, Then A Sorrow, Now A Sin, Then A Generous Or Brave Action.

Excellence Is The New Forever.

The Artist Always Has The Masters In His Eyes.

The World Is Always Childish, And With Each New Gewgaw Of A Revolution Or New Constitution That It Finds, Thinks It Shall Never Cry Any More.

Higher Than The Question Of Our Duration Is The Question Of Our Deserving. Immortality Will Come To Such As Are Fit For It, And He Would Be A Great Soul In Future Must Be A Great Soul Now.

Men Cease To Interest Us When We Find Their Limitations. The Only Sin Is Limitation. As Soon As You Once Come Up With A Man's Limitations, It Is All Over With Him.

There Are Twenty Ways Of Going To A Point, And One Is The Shortest; But Set Out At Once On One. A Man Who Has That Presence Of Mind Which Can Bring To Him On The Instant All He Knows, Is Worth For Action A Dozen Men Who Know As Much, But Can Only Bring It To Light Slowly.

Presence Of Mind

That You Are Fair Or Wise Is Vain, Or Strong, Or Rich, Or Generous; You Must Have Also The Untaught Strain That Sheds Beauty On The Rose.

The Most Advanced Nations Are Always Those Who Navigate The Most.

Solitude Is Impractical, And Society Fatal. We Must Keep Our Head In The One And Our Hands In The Other. The Conditions Are Met, If We Keep Our Independence, Yet Do Not Lose Our Sympathy.

It Was A Pleasure And A Privilege To Walk With Him [h.d. Thoreau]. He Knew The Country Like A Fox Or A Bird, And Passed Through It As Freely By Paths Of His Own.

The Affections Cannot Keep Their Youth Any More Than Men.

The Americans Have No Faith, They Rely On The Power Of A Dollar; They Are Deaf To Sentiment.

Duty Grows Everywhere--like Children, Like Grass.

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.

Let A Man Attain The Highest And Broadest Culture That Any American Has Possessed, Then Let Him Die By Sea-storm, Railroad Collision, Or Other Accident, And All America Will Acquiesce That The Best Thing Has Happened To Him; That, After The Education Has Gone Far, Such Is The Expensiveness Of America, That The Best Use To Put A Fine Person To Is To Drown Him To Save His Board.

A Man Should Learn To Detect And Watch That Gleam Of Light Which Flashes Across His Mind From Within, More Than The Lustre Of The Firmament Of Bards And Sages. Yet He Dismisses Without Notice His Thought, Because It Is His. In Every Work Of Genius We Recognize Our Own Rejected Thoughts: They Come Back To Us With A Certain Alienated Majesty.

The World Is All Outside, It Has No Inside.

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

Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds.

It Does Not Need That A Poem Should Be Long. Every Word Was Once A Poem.

There Is Nothing Settled In Manners, But The Laws Of Behavior Yield To The Energy Of The Individual.

Society Has Really No Graver Interest Than The Well-being Of The Literary Class.

All The Fairy Tales Of Aladdin, Or The Invisible Gyges, Or The Talisman That Opens Kings' Palaces, Or The Enchanted Halls Underground Or In The Sea, Are Only Fictions To Indicated The One Miracle Of Intellectual Enlargement.

A Man's Style Is His Mind's Voice. Wooden Minds, Wooden Voices.

Democracy Is Morose, And Runs To Anarchy.

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

Luck Is Just Another Word For Tenacity Of Purpose.

The Poor Are Only They Who Feel Poor.

The Order Of Things Consents To Virtue.

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

The Genius Of Reading And Of Gardening Are Antagonistic, Like Resinous And Vitreous Electricity. One Is Concentrative In Sparks And Shocks: The Other Is Diffuse Strength; So That Each Disqualifies Its Workman For The Other's Duties.

When He Has Seen, That It Is Not His, Nor Any Man's, But It Is The Soul Which Made The World, And That It Is All Accessible To Him, He Will Know That He, As Its Minister, May Rightfully Hold All Things Subordinate And Answerable To It.

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.

It Is The Doctrine Of The Popular Music-masters, That Whoever Can Speak Can Sing. So, Probably, Every Man Is Eloquent Once In His Life. Our Temperaments Differ In Capacity Of Heat, Or

Meek Young Men Grow Up In Libraries.

Many A Reformer Perishes In His Removal Of Rubbish,--and That Makes The Offensiveness Of The Class. They Are Partial; They Are Notequal To The Work They Pretend. They Lose Their Way; In The Assault On The Kingdom Of Darkness, They Expend All Their Energy On Some Accidental Evil, And Lose Their Sanity And Power Of Benefit.

Those Who Live To The Future Must Always Appear Selfish To Those Who Live To The Present.

A Man Must Ride Alternately On The Horses Of His Private And His Public Nature.

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.

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!

It Is Long Ere We Discover How Rich We Are. Our History, We Are Sure, Is Quite Tame: We Have Nothing To Write, Nothing To Infer. But Our Wiser Years Still Run Back To The Despised Recollections Of Childhood. . . .

I Thought As I Rode In The Cold Pleasant Light Of Sunday Morning How Silent & Passive Nature Offers, Every Morn, Her Wealth To Man; She Is Immensely Rich, He Is Welcome To Her Entire Goods, Which He Speaks No Word, Only Leaves Over Doors Ajar, Hall, Store Room, & Cellar. He May Do As He Will: If He Takes Her Hint & Uses Her Goods, She Speaks No Word; If He Blunders & Starves, She Says Nothing.

Thou Art To Me A Delicious Torment.

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