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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.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Idiot, The Indian,

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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.

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Crime And Punishment Grow Out Of One Stem.

The Corruption Of Man Is Followed By The Corruption Of Language.

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

What Terrible Questions We Are Learning To Ask! The Former Men Believed In Magic, By Which Temples, Cities, And Men Were Swallowed Up, And All Trace Of Them Gone. We Are Coming On The Secret Of A Magic Which Sweeps Out Of Men's Minds All Vestige Of Theism And Beliefs Which They And Their Fathers Held And Were Framed Upon.

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.

Miracle Comes To The Miraculous, Not To The Arithmetician.

The Idealism Of Berkeley Is Only A Crude Statement Of The Idealism Of Jesus, And That Again Is A Crude Statement Of The Fact Thatall Nature Is The Rapid Efflux Of Goodness Executing And Organizing Itself.

Coolness And Absence Of Heat And Haste Indicate Fine Qualities.

Teaching Is The Perpetual End And Office Of All Things. Teaching, Instruction Is The Main Design That Shines Through The Sky And Earth.

Its The Not The Destination, It's The Journey.

In The Woods We Return To Reason And Faith.

Men Admire The Man Who Can Organize Their Wishes And Thoughts In Stone And Wood And Steel And Brass.

Christianity Taught The Capacity, The Element, To Love The All-perfect Without A Stingy Bargain For Personal Happiness. It Taught That To Love Him Was Happiness;--to Love Him In Others' Virtues.

Let Us Be Poised, Wise And Our Own Today.

We Walk Alone In The World. Friends, Such As We Desire, Are Dreams And Fables.

Flowers Are The Earth Laughing.

But Whoso Is Heroic Must Find Crises To Try His Edge. Human Virtue Demands Her Champions And Martyrs, And The Trial Of Persecution Always Proceeds.

The Good Writer Seems To Be Writing About Himself, But Has His Eye Always On That Thread Of The Universe Which Runs Through Himself And All Things.

In Daily Life What Distinguishes The Master Is The Using Those Materials He Has, Instead Of Looking About For What Are More Renowned, Or What Others Have Used Well.

For, Rightly, Every Man Is A Channel Through Which Heaven Floweth, And, Whilst I Fancied I Was Criticising Him, I Was Censuring Orrather Terminating My Own Soul.

God Never Jests With Us, And Will Not Compromise The End Of Nature, By Permitting Any Inconsequence In Its Procession.

Nothing Divine Dies. All Good Is Eternally Reproductive. The Beauty Of Nature Re-forms Itself In The Mind, And Not For Barren Contemplation, But For New Creation.

The Hero Is A Mind Of Such Balance That No Disturbances Can Shake His Will, But Pleasantly, And, As It Were, Merrily, He Advancesto His Own Music, Alike In Frightful Alarms And In The Tipsy Mirth Of Universal Dissoluteness.

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.

In This Our Talking America, We Are Ruined By Our Good Nature And Listening On All Sides. This Compliance Takes Away The Power Ofbeing Greatly Useful.

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

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

The Eyes Indicate The Antiquity Of The Soul.

Converse With A Mind That Is Grandly Simple, And Literature Looks Like Word-catching. The Simplest Utterances Are Worthiest To Bewritten, Yet Are They So Cheap, And So Things Of Course, That, In The Infinite Riches Of The Soul, It Is Like Gathering A Few Pebbles Off The Ground, Or Bottling A Little Air In A Phial, When The Whole Earth And The Whole Atmosphere Are Ours.

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.

A Woman Should Always Challenge Our Respect, And Never Move Our Compassion.

Eloquence Is The Power To Translate A Truth Into Language Perfectly Intelligible To The Person To Whom You Speak.

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.

There Are Two Laws Discretenot Reconciled,law For Man, And Law For Thing.

Other Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds. Each Man Seeks Those Of Different Quality From His Own, And Such As Are Good Of Their Kind; That Is, He Seeks Other Men, And The Rest.

Man Is A Stream Whose Source Is Hidden. Our Being Is Descending Into Us From We Know Not Whence.

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

Postpone Not Your Life.

Procrastination

The Magnanimous Know Very Well That They Who Give Time, Or Money, Or Shelter, To The Stranger--so It Be Done For Love, And Not Forostentation--do, As It Were, Put God Under Obligation To Them, So Perfect Are The Compensations Of The Universe.

Under Every Deep A Lower Deep Opens.

It Seems To Be A Rule Of Wisdom Never To Rely On Your Memory Alone, Scarcely Even In Acts Of Pure Memory, But To Bring The Past For Judgment Into The Thousand-eyed Present, And Live Ever In A New Day.

Yet America Is A Poem In Our Eyes; Its Ample Geography Dazzles The Imagination, And It Will Not Wait Long For Metres.

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.

But What Is Classification But The Perceiving That These Objects Are Not Chaotic, And Are Not Foreign, But Have A Law Which Is Also The Law Of The Human Mind?

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 Selfish Man Suffers More From His Selfishness Than He From Whom That Selfishness Withholds Some Important Benefit.

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

Adult Males Are What Their Moms Designed Them.

The Man Of Genius Inspires Us With A Boundless Confidence In Our Own Powers.

History - A Biography Of A Few Stout And Earnest Persons

It Is Contended That Those Who Have Been Bred At Eton, Harrow, Rugby, And Westminster, That The Public Sentiment Within Each Of Those Schools Is High-toned And Manly; That, In Their Playgrounds, Courage Is Universally Admired, Meanness Despised, Manly Feelings And Generous Conduct Are Encouraged: That An Unwritten Code Of Honor Deals To The Spoiled Child Of Rank, And To The Child Of Upstart Wealth An Even-handed Justice, Purges Their Nonsense Out Of Both, And Does All That Can Be Done To Make Them Gentlemen.

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

'tis A Short Sight To Limit Our Faith In Laws To Those Of Gravity, Of Chemistry, Of Botany, And So Forth. Those Laws Do Not Stop Where Our Eyes Lose Them, But Push The Same Geometry And Chemistry Up Into The Invisible Plane Of Social And Rational Life, So That, Look Where We Will, In A Boy's Game, Or In The Strifes Of Races, A Perfect Reaction, A Perpetual Judgment Keeps Watch And Ward.

I Fear The Popular Notion Of Success Stands In Direct Opposition In All Points To The Real And Wholesome Success. One Adores Public Opinion, The Other, Private Opinion; One, Fame, The Other, Desert; One, Feats, The Other, Humility; One, Lucre, The Other, Love; One, Monopoly, And The Other, Hospitality Of Mind.

Great Geniuses Have The Shortest Biographies.

We Learn Geology The Morning After The Earthquake, On Ghastly Diagrams Of Cloven Mountains, Upheaved Plains, And The Dry Bed Of The Sea.

If A Man's Eye Is On The Eternal, His Intellect Will Grow.

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.

General Ideas Are Essences. They Are Our Gods: They Round And Ennoble The Most Partial And Sordid Way Of Living.

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.

There Is No Prosperity, Trade, Art, City, Or Great Material Wealth Of Any Kind, But If You Trace It Home, You Will Find It Rooted In A Thought Of Some Individual Man.

The Mob Is Man Voluntarily Descending To The Nature Of The Beast.

All The Devils Respect Virtue.

A Life In Harmony With Nature, The Love Of Truth And Virtue, Will Purge The Eyes To Understanding Her Text.

Life Is Unnecessarily Long. Moments Of Insight, Of Fine Personal Relation, A Smile, A Glance,--what Ample Borrowers Of Eternity They Are!

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.

No Matter How You Seem To Fatten On A Crime, There Can Never Be Good For The Bee Which Is Bad For The Hive.

We Honor The Rich Because They Have Externally The Freedom, Power, And Grace Which We Feel To Be Proper To Man, Proper To Us.

It Is One Of The Beautiful Compensations In This Life That No One Can Sincerely Try To Help Another Without Helping Himself.

Every Mind Must Make Its Choice Between Truth And Repose. It Cannot Have Both.

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

Though I Am Weak, Yet God, When Prayed, Cannot Withhold His Conquering Aid.

God Builds His Temple In The Heart On The Ruins Of Churches And Religions.

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.

Let The Stoics Say What They Please, We Do Not Eat For The Good Of Living, But Because The Meat Is Savory And The Appetite Is Keen.

Wherever The Truth Is Injured, Defend It.

Wealth Brings With It Its Own Checks And Balances. The Basis Of Political Economy Is Noninterference. The Only Safe Rule Is Found In The Self-adjusting Meter Of Demand And Supply. Open The Doors Of Opportunity To Talent And Virtue And They Will Do Themselves Justice, And Property Will Not Be In Bad Hands. In A Free And Just Commonwealth, Property Rushes From The Idle And Imbecile To The Industrious, Brave And Persevering.

Without A Rich Heart, Wealth Is An Ugly Beggar.

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

Earth Endures; Stars Abide.

A Little Praise Goes A Great Ways.

The Secret Of The Illusoriness Is In The Necessity Of A Succession Of Moods Or Objects. Gladly We Would Anchor, But The Anchorageis Quicksand.

Every Materialist Will Be An Idealist; But An Idealist Can Never Go Backward To Be A Materialist.

The Great Man Is Not Convulsible Or Tormentable; Events Pass Over Him Without Much Impression.

As I Walked In The Woods I Felt What I Often Feel That Nothing Can Befall Me In Life, No Calamity, No Disgrace (leaving Me My Eyes) To Which Nature Will Not Offer A Sweet Consolation. Standing On The Bare Ground With My Head Bathed By The Blithe Air, & Uplifted Into The Infinite Space, I Become Happy In My Universal Relations. The Name Of The Nearest Friend Sounds Then Foreign & Accidental. I Am The Heir Of Uncontained Beauty And Power.

We Write From Aspiration And Antagonism, As Well As From Experience. We Paint Those Qualities Which We Do Not Posses.

Why Should We Not Have A First-hand And Immediate Experience Of God?

What A Benefit Would The American Government, Not Yet Relieved Of Its Extreme Need, Render To Itself, And To Every City, Village And Hamlet In The States, If It Would Tax Whiskey And Rum Almost To The Point Of Prohibition! Was It Bonaparte Who Said That He Found Vices Very Good Patriots? "he Got Five Millions From The Love Of Brandy, And He Should Be Glad To Know Which Of The Virtues Would Pay Him As Much." Tobacco And Opium Have Broad Backs, And Will Cheerfully Carry The Load Of Armies, If You Choose To Make Them Pay High For Such Joy As They Give And Such Harm As They Do.

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

A Man Often Pays Dear For A Small Frugality.

The Key To Every Man Is His Thought.

Before We Acquire Great Power We Must Acquire Wisdom To Use It Well.

I Suppose Every Old Scholar Has Had The Experience Of Reading Something In A Book Which Was Significant To Him, But Which He Could Never Find Again. Sure He Is That He Read It There, But No One Else Ever Read It, Nor Can He Find It Again, Though He Buy The Book And Ransack Every Page.

Happy Is The House That Shelters A Friend.

When We Are Exalted By Ideas, We Do Not Owe This To Plato, But To The Idea, To Which Also Plato Was Debtor.

All That Adam Had, All That Caesar Could, You Have And Can Do.... Build, Therefore, Your Own World.

Humility Is The Secret Of The Wise.

I Hate The Giving Of The Hand Unless The Whole Man Accompanies It.

If We Meet No Gods, It Is Because We Harbor None. If There Is Grandeur In You, You Will Find Grandeur In Porters And Sweeps.

The Man For Whom The Law Exists - The Man Of Forms, The Conservative - Is A Tame Man.

That Which We Call Sin In Others Is Experiment For Us.

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.

The Key To Every Man Is His Thought. Sturdy And Defying Though He Look, He Has A Helm Which He Obeys, Which Is The Idea After Which All His Facts Are Classified. He Can Only Be Reformed By Showing Him A New Idea Which Commands His Own.

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.

When Believers And Unbelievers Live In The Same Manner - I Distrust The Religion.

If The King Is In The Palace, Nobody Looks At The Walls. It Is When He Is Gone, And The House Is Filled With Grooms And Gazers, That We Turn From The People, To Find Relief In The Majestic Men That Are Suggested By The Pictures And The Architecture.

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.

The Possibility Of Interpretation Lies In The Identity Of The Observer With The Observed. Each Material Thing Has Its Celestial Side; Has Its Translation, Through Humanity, Into The Spiritual And Necessary Sphere, Where It Plays A Part As Indestructible As Any Other.

The Effect Of The Indulgence Of Human Affection Is A Certain Cordial Exhilaration.

A Person Seldom Falls Sick But The Bystanders Are Animated With A Faint Hope That He Will Die.

The Landscape Belongs To The Person Who Looks At It..." -ralph Waldo Emerson

Surely Nobody Would Be A Charlatan, Who Could Afford To Be Sincere.

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

The Divine Gift Is Ever The Instant Life, Which Receives And Uses And Creates, And Can Well Bury The Old In The Omnipotency With Which Nature Decomposes All Her Harvest For Recomposition.

The Artists Must Be Sacrificed To Their Art. Like The Bees, They Must Put Their Lives Into The Sting They Give.

All Things Are Flowing, Even Those That Seem Immovable. The Adamant Is Always Passing Into Smoke. The Plants Imbibe The Materialswhich They Want From The Air And The Ground. They Burn, That Is, Exhale And Decompose Their Own Bodies Into The Air And Earth Again. The Animal Burns, Or Undergoes The Like Perpetual Consumption. The Earth Burns, The Mountains Burn And Decompose, Slower, But Incessantly.

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.

Don't Make A Novel To Establish A Principle Of Political Economy. You Will Spoil Both.

Jesus And Shakespeare Are Fragments Of The Soul, And By Love I Conquer And Incorporate Them In My Own Conscious Domain. His Virtue,--is Not That Mine? His Wit,--if It Cannot Be Made Mine, It Is Not Wit.

Milton Says, That The Lyric Poet May Drink Wine And Live Generously, But The Epic Poet, He Who Shall Sing Of The Gods, And Their Descent Unto Men, Must Drink Water Out Of A Wooden Bowl. For Poetry Is Not "devil's Wine," But God's Wine.

Knowledge Is The Antidote To Fear,- Knowledge, Use And Reason, With Its Higher Aids.

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

Tomorrow Is A New Day; Begin It Well And Serenely And With Too High A Spirit To Be Encumbered With Your Old Nonsense.

Positive Thinking

But A Compassion For That Which Is Not And Cannot Be Useful And Lovely, Is Degrading And Futile.

We Postpone Our Literary Work Until We Have More Ripeness And Skill To Write, And We One Day Discover That Our Literary Talent Wasa Youthful Effervescence Which We Have Now Lost.

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.

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.

Things Admit Of Being Used As Symbols, Because Nature Is A Symbol, In The Whole, And In Every Part.

If A Man Fasten His Attention On A Single Aspect Of Truth And Apply Himself To That Alone For A Long Time, The Truth Becomes Distorted And Not Itself But Falsehood.

Every Man Is A Divinity In Disguise, A God Playing The Fool.

The Good Husband Finds Method As Efficient In The Packing Of Fire-wood In A Shed, Or In The Harvesting Of Fruits In The Cellar, As In Peninsular Campaigns Or The Files Of The Department Of State.

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

It Is Easy To See That A Greater Self-reliance Must Work A Revolution In All The Offices And Relations Of Men; In Their Religion; In Their Education; In Their Pursuits; Their Modes Of Living; Their Association; In Their Property; In Their Speculative Views.

Daughter Of Heaven And Earth, Coy Spring, With Sudden Passion Languishing, Teaching Barren Moors To Smile, Painting Pictures Mile On Mile, Holds A Cup Of Cowslip Wreaths Whence A Smokeless Incense Breathes.

All Men Are In Some Degree Impressed By The Face Of The World; Some Men Even To Delight. This Love Of Beauty Is Taste. Others Have The Same Love In Such Success That, Not Content With Admiring, They Seek To Embody It In New Forms. The Creation Of Beauty Is Art.

The Highest Compact We Can Make With Our Fellow Is - "let There Be Truth Between Us Two Forevermore."

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

Life Is Too Short To Waste . . . 'twill Soon Be Dark; Up! Mind Thine Own Aim, And God Speed The Mark!

Slavery It Is That Makes Slavery; Freedom, Freedom. The Slavery Of Women Happened When The Men Were Slaves Of Kings.

Self-command Is The Main Elegance.

Not For Nothing One Face, One Character, One Fact Makes Much Impression On Him, And Another None.

As The Farmer Casts Into The Ground The Finest Ears Of His Grain, The Time Will Come When We Too Shall Hold Nothing Back, But Shall Eagerly Convert More Than We Now Possess Into Means And Powers, When We Shall Be Willing To Sow The Sun And The Moon For Seeds.

Nature Does Not Cocker Us: We Are Children, Not Pets: She Is Not Fond: Everything Is Dealt To Us Without Fear Or Favor, After Severe Universal Laws.

But, If We Explore The Literature Of Heroism, We Shall Quickly Come To Plutarch, Who Is Its Doctor And Historian. To Him We Owe The Brasidas, The Dion, The Epaminodas, The Scipio Of Old, And I Must Think We Are More Deeply Indebted To Him Than To All The Ancient Writers. Each Of His "lives" Is A Refutation To The Despondency And Cowardice Of Our Religious And Political Theorists. A Wild Courage, A Stoicism Not Of The Schools, But Of The Blood, Shines In Every Anecdote, And Had Given That Book Immense Fame.

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

Philosophically Considered, The Universe Is Composed Of Nature And The Soul.

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.

Nature Arms Each Man With Some Faculty Which Enables Him To Do Easily Some Feat Impossible To Any Other.

If We Live Truly, We Shall See Truly.

Character Is That Which Can Do Without Success.

The People Know That They Need In Their Representative Much More Than Talent, Namely, The Power To Make His Talent Trusted.

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

Were Meant To Be

Time Dissipates To Shining Ether The Solid Angularity Of Facts.

Wisdom Is Infused Into Every Form.

We Are Like Travellers Using The Cinders Of A Volcano To Roast Their Eggs. Whilst We See That It Always Stands Ready To Clothe What We Would Say, We Cannot Avoid The Question Whether The Characters Are Not Significant Of Themselves.

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.

No Rent-roll Nor Army-list Can Dignify Skulking And Dissimulation: And The First Point Of Courtesy Must Always Be Truth, As Really All The Forms Of Good-breeding Point That Way.

To Me, However, The Question Of The Times Resolved Itself Into A Practical Question Of The Conduct Of Life. How Shall I Live? We Are Incompetent To Solve The Times. Our Geometry Cannot Span The Huge Orbits Of The Prevailing Ideas, Behold Their Return, And Reconcile Their Opposition. We Can Only Obey Our Own Polarity.

The Moral Equalizes All; Enriches, Empowers All. It Is The Coin Which Buys All, And Which All Find In Their Pocket. Under The Whipof The Driver, The Slave Shall Feel His Equality With Saints And Heroes.

The Mystic Must Be Steadily Told,-all That You Say Is Just As True Without The Tedious Use Of That Symbol As With It. Let Us Have A Little Algebra, Instead Of This Trite Rhetoric,-universal Signs, Instead Of These Village Symbols,-and We Shall Both Be Gainers. The History Of Hierarchies Seems To Show That All Religious Error Consisted In Making The Symbol Too Stark And Solid, And Was At Last Nothing But An Excess Of The Organ Of Language.

The World Proceeds From The Same Spirit As The Body Of Man. It Is A Remoter And Inferior Incarnation Of God, A Projection Of God In The Unconscious.

Eloquence Shows The Power And Possibility Of Man.

Whatever It Is, It's Better In The Wind.

In Self-trust All The Virtues Are Comprehended.

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.

The World Is Nothing, The Man Is All; In Yourself Is The Law Of All Nature, And You Know Not Yet How A Globule Of Sap Ascends; In Yourself Slumbers The Whole Of Reason; It Is For You To Know All, It Is For You To Dare All.

How Often We Must Remember The Art Of The Surgeon, Which, In Replacing The Broken Bone, Contents Itself With Releasing The Parts From False Position; They Fly Into Place By The Action Of The Muscles. On This Art Of Nature All Our Arts Rely.

If The Individuals Who Compose The Purest Circles Of Aristocracy In Europe, The Guarded Blood Of Centuries, Should Pass In Review,in Such Manner As That We Could, At Leisure, And Critically Inspect Their Behavior, We Might Find No Gentleman, And No Lady; For, Although Excellent Specimens Of Courtesy And High-breeding Would Gratify Us In The Assemblage, In The Particulars, We Should Detect Offence. Because, Elegance Comes Of No Breeding, But Of Birth.

Shall We Then Judge A Country By The Majority, Or By The Minority? By The Minority, Surely. 'tis Pedantry To Estimate Nations By The Census, Or By Square Miles Of Land, Or Other Than By Their Importance To The Mind Of The Time.

The House Is A Castle Which The King Cannot Enter.

The Perception Of The Comic Is A Tie Of Sympathy With Other Men, A Pledge Of Sanity, And A Protection From Those Perverse Tendencies And Gloomy Insanities In Which Fine Intellects Sometimes Lose Themselves. A Rogue Alive To The Ludicrous Is Still Convertible. If That Sense Is Lost, His Fellow-men Can Do Little For Him.

As Picture Teaches The Colouring, So Sculpture The Anatomy Of Form.

Everything In Creation Has Its Appointed Painter Or Poet And Remains In Bondage Like The Princess In The Fairy Tale 'til Its Appropriate Liberator Comes To Set It Free.

But, If A Man Would Be Alone, Let Him Look At The Stars. The Rays That Come From These Heavenly Worlds, Will Separate Between Him And What He Touches. One Might Think The Atmosphere Was Made Transparent With This Design, To Give Man, In The Heavenly Bodies, The Perpetual Presence Of The Sublime... But Every Night Come Out These Envoys Of Beauty, And Light The Universe With Their Admonishing Smile.

Every Book Is A Quotation; And Every House Is A Quotation Out Of All Forests, And Mines, And Stone Quarries; And Every Man Is A Quotation From All His Ancestors.

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

All Ages Of Belief Have Been Great; All Of Unbelief Have Been Mean.

What Is The Hardest Task In The World? To Think.

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.

England, An Old And Exhausted Island, Must One Day Be Contented, Like Other Parents, To Be Strong Only In Her Children.

In The True Mythology, Love Is An Immortal Child, And Beauty Leads Him As A Guide; Nor Can We Express A Deeper Sense Than When We Say, Beauty Is The Pilot Of The Young Soul.

It Is The Secret Of The World That All Things Subsist And Do Not Die, But Only Retire A Little From Sight And Afterward Return Again.

We Thirst For Approbation, Yet Cannot Forgive The Approver.

If There Is Any Period One Would Desire To Be Born In, Is It Not The Age Of Revolution; When The Old And The New Stand Side By Side, And Admit Of Being Compared; When The Energies Of All Men Are Searched By Fear And By Hope; When The Historic Glories Of The Old Can Be Compensated By The Rich Possibilities Of The New Era?

The Beautiful Is Never Plentiful.

We Pray To Be Conventional. But The Wary Heaven Takes Care You Shall Not Be, If There Is Anything Good In You. Dante Was Very Badcompany, And Was Never Invited To Dinner.

He In Whom The Love Of Repose Predominates Will Accept The First Creed, The First Philosophy, The First Political Party He Meets — Most Likely His Father's. He Gets Rest, Commodity, And Reputation; But He Shuts The Door Of Truth.

Every Day, A Little Sadder, A Little Madder. Will Someone Get Me A Ladder?

The History Of Mankind Interests Us Only As It Exhibits A Steady Gain Of Truth And Right, In The Incessant Conflict Which It Records Between The Material And The Moral Nature.

The Life Of Truth Is Cold.

Poetry Teaches The Enormous Force Of A Few Words, And, In Proportion To The Inspiration, Checks Loquacity.

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

The World Globes Itself In A Drop Of Dew.

Whenever The Average Intellect Of The Clergy Declines In The Balance With The Average Intellect Of The People The Churches Will Be Shut Up And A New Order Of Things [will] Begin.

Strong Men Greet War, Tempest, Hard Times. They Wish, As Pindar Said, To Tread The Floors Of Hell, With Necessities As Hard As Iron.

There Is No God Dare Wrong A Worm.

There Is No God

Whatever Appeals To The Imagination, By Transcending The Ordinary Limits Of Human Ability, Wonderfully Encourages And Liberates Us.

The World Looks Like A Multiplication-table, Or A Mathematical Equation, Which, Turn It How You Will, Balances Itself.

Mathematical Equations

Astronomy Taught Us Our Insignificance In Nature.

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