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The Imitator Dooms Himself To Hopeless Mediocrity. The Inventor Did It Because It Was Natural To Him, And So In Him It Has A Charm. In The Imitator Something Else Is Natural, And He Bereaves Himself Of His Own Beauty, To Come Short Of Another Man's.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Imitator Dooms Himself

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Imitator Dooms Himself To Hopeless Mediocrity. The Inventor Did It Because It Was Natural To Him, And So In Him It Has A Charm. In The Imitator Something Else Is Natural, And He Bereaves Himself Of His Own Beauty, To Come Short Of Another Man's.

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Not In His Goals But In His Transitions, Man Is Great.

The Student Is To Read History Actively And Not Passively; To Esteem His Own Life The Text, And Books The Commentary. Thus Compelled, The Muse Of History Will Utter Oracles As Never To Those Who Do Not Respect Themselves.

All Necessary Truth Is Its Own Evidence.

Nature Turns All Malfaisance To Good.

Tis The Good Reader That Makes The Good Book; In Every Book He Finds Passages Which Seem Confidences Or Asides Hidden From All Else And Unmistakenly Meant For His Ear; The Profit Of Books Is According To The Sensibility Of The Reader; The Profoundest Thought Or Passion Sleeps As In A Mine, Until It Is Discovered By An Equal Mind And Heart.

Spoons And Skimmers You Can Be Undistinguishably Together; But Vases And Statues Require Each A Pedestal For Itself.

Moderation In All Things, Especially Moderation.

Moderation In All Things

If You Are Wise, You Will Dread A Prosperity Which Only Loads You With More.

A Man Of Good Sense But Of Little Faith, Whose Compassion Seemed To Lead Him To Church As Often As He Went There, Said To Me; 'that He Liked To Have Concerts, And Fairs, And Churches, And Other Public Amusements Go On.

The Value Of A Dollar Is To Buy Just Things; A Dollar Goes On Increasing In Value With All The Genius And All The Virtue Of The World. A Dollar In A University Is Worth More Than A Dollar In A Jail; In A Temperate, Schooled, Law-abiding Community Than In Some Sink Of Crime, Where Dice, Knives, And Arsenic Are In Constant Play.

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

No Picture Of Life Can Have Any Veracity That Does Not Admit The Odious Facts. A Man's Power Is Hooped In By A Necessity, Which, By Many Experiments, He Touches On Every Side, Until He Learns Its Arc.

Dreams And Beasts Are Two Keys By Which We Find Out The Keys Of Our Own Nature.

Each Mind Has Its Own Method.

All Great Successes Are The Triumph Of Persistence.

We Are Never Without A Pilot. When We Know Not How To Steer, And Dare Not Hoist A Sail, We Can Drift. The Current Knows The Way, Though We Do Not. The Ship Of Heaven Guides Itself, And Will Not Accept A Wooden Rudder.

There Is No Event Greater In Life Than The Appearance Of New Persons About Our Hearth, Except It Be The Progress Of The Characterwhich Draws Them.

On Bravely Through The Sunshine And The Showers! Time Hath His Work To Do, And We Have Ours.

I Do Not See How A Barbarous Community And A Civilized Community Can Constitute A State. I Think We Must Get Rid Of Slavery Or We Must Get Rid Of Freedom.

We Say The Cows Laid Out Boston. Well, There Are Worse Surveyors.

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.

There Is In Nature A Parallel Unity Which Corresponds To The Unity In The Mind And Makes It Available. This Methodizing Mind Meets No Resistance In Its Attempts. The Scattered Blocks, With Which It Strives To Form A Symmetrical Structure, Fit. This Design Following After Finds With Joy That Like Design Went Before. Not Only Man Puts Things In A Row, But Things Belong In A Row.

To Make Knowledge Valuable, You Must Have The Cheerfulness Of Wisdom.

The Roman Rule Was, To Teach A Boy Nothing That He Could Not Learn Standing. The Old English Rule Was, "all Summer In The Field, And All Winter In The Study." And It Seems As If A Man Should Learn To Plant, Or To Fish, Or To Hunt, That He Might Secure His Subsistence At All Events, And Not Be Painful To His Friends And Fellow Men.

Let The Words Be Gazetted And Ridiculous Henceforward.

Philanthropies And Charities Have A Certain Air Of Quackery.

What Is The Imagination? Only An Arm Or Weapon Of The Interior Energy; Only The Precursor Of The Reason.

Besides, Our Action On Each Other, Good As Well As Evil, Is So Incidental And At Random, That We Can Seldom Hear The Acknowledgments Of Any Person Who Would Thank Us For A Benefit, Without Some Shame And Humiliation. We Can Rarely Strike A Direct Stroke, But Must Be Content With An Oblique One; We Seldom Have The Satisfaction Of Yielding A Direct Benefit, Which Is Directly Received.

My Angel,-his Name Is Freedom,- Choose Him To Be Your King; He Shall Cut Pathways East And West, And Fend You With His Wing.

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.

'tis A Good Rule In Every Journey To Provide Some Piece Of Liberal Study To Rescue The Hours Which Bad Weather, Bad Company, And Taverns Steal From The Best Economist.

Poets Should Be Law-givers; That Is, The Boldest Lyric Inspiration Should Not Chide And Insult, But Should Announce And Lead The Civil Code, And The Day's Work.

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 Law Of Nature Is Alternation For Evermore. Each Electrical State Superinduces The Opposite.

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.

All Poets Have Signalized Their Consciousness Of Rare Moments When They Were Superior To Themselves, -when A Light, A Freedom, A Power Came To Them Which Lifted Them To Performances Far Better Than They Could Reach At Other Times.

You Cannot Do A Kindness Too Soon, For You Never Know How Soon It Will Be Too Late.

Every Word We Speak Is Million-faced Or Convertible To An Indefinite Number Of Applications. If It Were Not So We Could Read No Book. Your Remark Would Only Fit Your Case, Not Mine.

Friendship, Like The Immortality Of The Soul, Is Too Good To Be Believed.

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

A Man Is A God In Ruins.

Nobody Can Bring You Peace But Yourself.

I Would Have The Studies Elective. Scholarship Is To Be Created Not By Compulsion, But By Awakening A Pure Interest In Knowledge. The Wise Instructor Accomplishes This By Opening To His Pupils Precisely The Attractions The Study Has For Himself. The Marking Is A System For Schools, Not For The College; For Boys, Not For Men; And It Is An Ungracious Work To Put On A Professor.

Almost All People Descend To Meet. All Association Must Be A Compromise, And, What Is Worst, The Very Flower And Aroma Of The Flower Of Each Of The Beautiful Natures Disappears As They Approach Each Other.

Circles, Like The Soul, Are Neverending And Turn Round And Round Without A Stop.

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.

Freedom Is Not The Right To Do As You Please, But The Liberty To Do As You Should.

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

Let The Bird Sing Without Deciphering The Song.

Within, I Do Not Find Wrinkles And Used Heart, But Unspent Youth.

I Am A Willow Of The Wilderness, Loving The Wind That Bent Me.

Religion Is To Do Right. It Is To Love, It Is To Serve, It Is To Think, It Is To Be Humble.

Intemperance Is The Only Vulgarity.

A Good Deal Of Our Politics Is Physiological.

This Book Of Montaigne The World Has Endorsed By Translating It Into All Tongues.

One Idea Lights A Thousand Candles.

So Use All That Is Called Fortune. Most Men Gamble With Her, And Gain All, And Lose All, As Her Wheel Rolls. But Do Thou Leave As Unlawful These Winnings, And Deal With Cause And Effect, The Chancellors Of God.

If You Believe In Fate, Believe In It, At Least, For Your Good.

Speak The Affirmative; Emphasize Your Choice By Utter Ignoring Of All That You Reject.

There Is No Way To Success In Art But To Take Off Your Coat, Grind Paint, And Work Like A Digger On The Railroad, All Day And Every Day.

The Use Of Literature Is To Afford Us A Platform Whence We May Command A View Of Our Present Life, A Purchase By Which We May Move It....we See Literature Best From The Midst Of Wild Nature, Or From The Din Of Affairs, Or From A High Religion. The Field Cannot Be Well Seen From Within The Field.

Every Industrious Man, In Every Lawful Calling, Is A Useful Man. And One Principal Reason Why Men Are So Often Useless Is That They Neglect Their Own Profession Or Calling, And Divide And Shift Their Attention Among A Multiplicity Of Objects And Pursuits.

Every Young Man Is Prone To Be Misled By The Suggestions Of His Own Ill-founded Ambition Which He Mistakes For The Promptings Of Asecret Genius, And Thence Dreams Of Unrivaled Greatness.

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

Every Calamity Is A Spur And A Valuable Hint.

If The Aristocrat Is Only Valid In Fashionable Circles, And Not With Truckmen, He Will Never Be A Leader In Fashion; And If The Man Of The People Cannot Speak On Equal Terms With The Gentleman, So That The Gentleman Shall Perceive That He Is Already Really Of His Own Order, He Is Not To Be Feared.

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

The Wise Man In The Storm Prays God Not For Safety From Danger But For Deliverance From Fear. It Is The Storm Within Which Endangers Him[,] Not The Storm Without.

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.

You Must Treat The Days Respectfully, You Must Be A Day Yourself, And Not Interrogate It Like A College Professor.

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

Postpone Not Your Life.

Procrastination

Men Do What Is Called A Good Action, As Some Piece Of Courage Or Charity, Much As They Would Pay A Fine In Expiation Of Daily Non-appearance On Parade. Their Works Are Done As An Apology Or Extenuation Of Their Living In The World. I Do Not Wish To Expiate, But To Live. My Life Is Not An Apology, But A Life.

It In Every Fair Face, Every Fair Sky, Every Fair Flower.

When A Man Does Not Write His Poetry, It Escapes By Other Vents Through Him.

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

All Great Men Come Out Of The Middle Classes.

It Is The Quality Of The Moment, Not The Number Of Days, Or Events, Or Of Actors, That Imports.

Science In England, In America, Is Jealous Of Theory, Hates The Name Of Love And Moral Purpose. There's Revenge For This Humanity.what Manner Of Man Does Science Make? The Boy Is Not Attracted. He Says, I Do Not Wish To Be Such A Kind Of Man As My Professor Is.

Culture Is The Suggestion, From Certain Best Thoughts, That A Man Has A Range Of Affinities Through Which He Can Modulate The Violence Of Any Master-tones That Have A Droning Preponderance In His Scale, And Succor Him Against Himself. Culture Redresses This Imbalance, Puts Him Among Equals And Superiors, Revives The Delicious Sense Of Sympathy, And Warns Him Of The Dangers Of Solitude And Repulsion.

I Am Become A Transparent Eyeball.

Luck Is Just Another Word For Tenacity Of Purpose.

The Delicate Muses Lose Their Head If Their Attention Is Once Diverted. Perhaps If You Were Successful Abroad In Talking And Dealing With Men, You Would Not Come Back To Your Bookshelf And Your Task. When The Spirit Chooses You For Its Scribe To Publish Some Commandment, It Makes You Odious To Men And Men Odious To You, And You Shall Accept That Loathsomeness With Joy. The Moth Must Fly To The Lamp, And You Must Solve Those Questions Though You Die.

We Want But Two Or Three Friends, But These We Cannot Do Without, And They Serve Us In Every Thought We Think.

Peace Has Its Victories, But It Takes Brave Men And Women To Win Them.

Always Pay; For First Or Last You Must Pay Your Entire Debt.

Not Out Of Those, On Whom Systems Of Education Have Exhausted Their Culture, Comes The Helpful Giant To Destroy The Old Or To Build The New, But Out Of Unhandselled Savage Nature, Out Of Terrible Druids And Berserkirs, Come At Last Alfred And Shakespeare.

The Poor Are Only They Who Feel Poor.

The Passive Master Lent His Hand, To The Vast Soul Which O'er Him Planned.

I Am Present At The Sowing Of The Seed Of The World. With A Geometry Of Sunbeams, The Soul Lays The Foundations Of Nature.

I Covet Truth; Beauty Is Unripe Childhood's Cheat; I Leave It Behind With The Games Of Youth.

O Friend, Never Strike Sail To A Fear!

The Peril Of Every Fine Faculty Is The Delight Of Playing With It For Pride. Talent Is Commonly Developed At The Expense Of Character, And The Greater It Grows, The More Is The Mischief. Talent Is Mistaken For Genius, A Dogma Or System For Truth, Ambition For Greatness, Ingenuity For Poetry, Sensuality For Art.

The Lover Is Made Happier By His Love Than The Object Of His Affection.

We Learn Geology The Morning After The Earthquake.

The Genius Of The Platonists, Is Intoxicating To The Student, Yet How Few Particulars Of It Can I Detach From All Their Books.

Character Is An Invincible Force, Which Acts By Presence And Without Means

Wild Liberty Develops Iron Conscience. Want Of Liberty, By Strengthening Law And Decorum, Stupefies Conscience.

America Is A Country Of Young Men.

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

Sentimentalists ... Adopt Whatever Merit Is In Good Repute, And Almost Make It Hateful With Their Praise. The Warmer Their Expressions, The Colder We Feel.... Cure The Drunkard, Heal The Insane, Mollify The Homicide, Civilize The Pawnee, But What Lessons Can Be Devised For The Debauchee Of Sentiment?

Is The Acorn Better Than The Oak Which Is Its Fullness And Completion?

Everything Runs To Excess; Every Good Quality Is Noxious If Unmixed.

Power Is In Nature The Essential Measure Of Right.

As Gas-light Is Found To Be The Best Nocturnal Police, So The Universe Protects Itself By Pitiless Publicity.

There Is No One Who Does Not Exaggerate. In Conversation, Men Are Encumbered With Personality, And Talk Too Much.

Exaggeration Is

Cities Of Mortals Woe-begone Fantastic Care Derides, But In The Serious Landscape Lone Stern Benefit Abides.

To Be Great, You Must Be Misunderstood

Perpetual Modernness Is The Measure Of Merit, In Every Work Of Art; Since The Author Of It Was Not Misled By Anything Short- Livedor Local, But Abode By Real And Abiding Traits.

Give A Boy Address And Accomplishments And You Give Him The Mastery Of Palaces And Fortunes Where He Goes.

It Is Very Certain That The Strong British Race Which Has Now Overrun Much Of This Continent, Must Also Overrun [texas], And Mexico And Oregon Also, And It Will In The Course Of Ages Be Of Small Import By What Particular Occasions And Methods It Was Done.

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

There Is A Certain Satisfaction In Coming Down To The Lowest Ground Of Politics, For We Get Rid Of Cant And Hypocrisy.

But Your Isolation Must Not Be Mechanical, But Spiritual, That Is, Must Be Elevation.

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

Good Poetry Could Not Have Been Otherwise Written Than It Is. The First Time You Hear It, It Sounds Rather As If Copied Out Of Some Invisible Tablet In The Eternal Mind Than As If Arbitrarily Composed By The Poet.

The Intellect,-that Is Miraculous! Who Has It, Has The Talisman: His Skin And Bones, Though They Were Of The Color Of Night, Are Transparent, And The Everlasting Stars Shine Through, With Attractive Beams.

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.

I Would Study, I Would Know, I Would Admire Forever.

The Hard Soil And Four Months Of Snow Make The Inhabitants Of The Northern Temperate Zone Wiser And Abler Than His Fellow Who Enjoys The Fixed Smile Of The Tropics.

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.

Our Chief Want In Life Is Somebody Who Will Make Us Do What We Can.

For Flowers That Bloom About Our Feet; For Tender Grass, So Fresh, So Sweet; For Song Of Bird, And Hum Of Bee; For All Things Fair We Hear Or See, Father In Heaven, We Thank Thee!

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

Art Is Not To Be Found By Touring To Egypt, China, Or Peru; If You Cannot Find It At Your Own Door, You Will Never Find It.

Manners Aim To Facilitate Life, To Get Rid Of Impediments, And Bring The Man Pure To Energize. They Aid Our Dealing And Conversation, As A Railway Aids Travelling, By Getting Rid Of All Avoidable Obstructions Of The Road, And Leaving Nothing To Be Conquered But Pure Space.

The Soul Circumscribes All Things.

My Joy In Friends, Those Sacred People, Is My Consolation.

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

The Basis Of Good Manners Is Self-reliance.

We Know That Madness Belongs To Love,--what Power To Paint A Vile Object In Hues Of Heaven.

Law Of Contrariness: Our Chief Want In Life Is Somebody Who Shall Make Us Do What We Can. Having Found Them, We Shall Then Hate Them For It.

If With Love Thy Heart Has Burned; If Thy Love Is Unreturned; Hide Thy Grief Within Thy Breast, Though It Tear Thee Unexpressed; For When Love Has Once Departed From The Eyes Of The False-hearted, And One By One Has Torn Off Quite The Bandages Of Purple Light; Though Thou Wert The Loveliest Form The Soul Had Ever Dressed, Thou Shalt Seem, In Each Reply, A Vixen To His Altered Eye; Thy Softest Pleadings Seem Too Bold, Thy Praying Lute Will Seem To Scold; Though Thou Kept The Straightest Road, Yet Thou Errest Far And Broad.

There Is No Den In The Wide World To Hide A Rogue. Commit A Crime, And The Earth Is Made Of Glass. Commit A Crime, And It Seems As If A Coat Of Snow Fell On The Ground, Such As Reveals In The Woods The Track Of Every Partridge And Fox And Squirrel And Mole.

The Pleasure Of Life Is According To The Man That Lives It, And Not According To The Work Or Place.

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?

Insist On Yourself. Never Imitate.

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.

Science Finds It Methods.

My Tongue Is Prone To Lose The Way,not So My Pen, For In A Letterwe Have Not Better Things To Say,but Surely Put Them Better.

If Man Has Good Corn, Or Wood, Or Boards, Or Pigs To Sell, Or Can Make Better Chairs Or Knives, Crucibles, Or Church Organs, Than Anybody Else, You Will Find A Broad, Hard-beaten Road To His House, Though It Be In The Woods.

Would We Codify The Laws That Should Reign In Households, And Whose Daily Transgression Annoys And Mortifies Us, And Degrades Our Household Life, We Must Adorn Every Day With Sacrifices. Good Manners Are Made Up Of Petty Sacrifices.

Money Often Costs Too Much, And Power And Pleasure Are Not Cheap.

There Is No Luck In Literary Reputation. They Who Make Up The Final Verdict Upon Every Book Are Not The Partial And Noisy Readers Of The Hour When It Appears; But A Court As Of Angels, A Public Not To Be Bribed, Not To Be Entreated, And Not To Be Overawed, Decides Upon Every Man's Title To Fame.

The Highest Revelation Is That God Is In Every Man.

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

To Be Great Is To Be Misunderstood.

The Life Of Man Is A Self-evolving Circle.

Manners Are Very Communicable: Men Catch Them From Each Other.

Art Is Evidence Of Our Most Creative Moment.

The Secret Of The World Is The Tie Between Person And Event. Person Makes Event And Event Person.

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.

Life Is Short But There Is Always Time For Courtesy.

...as There Is No Screen Or Ceiling Between Our Heads And The Infinite Heavens, So Is There No Bar Or Wall In The Soul Where Man, The Effect, Ceases, And God, The Cause, Begins. The Walls Are Taken Away. We Lie Open On One Side To The Deeps Of Spiritual Nature, To The Attributes Of God. Justice We See And Know, Love, Freedom, Power. These Natures No Man Ever Got Above, But They Tower Over Us, And Most In The Moment When Our Interests Tempt Us To Wound Them.

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

Different Faces

Great Thoughts Ensure Musical Expression.

Musical Expression

Tis A Short Sight To Limit Our Faith In Laws To Those Of Gravity, Of Chemistry, Of Botany, And So Forth.

Or Whipping Its Rough Surface For A Trout.

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

The Aristocrat Is The Democrat Ripe, And Gone To Seed.

Every Man Is As Lazy As He Dares To Be.

Women Stand Related To Beautiful Nature Around Us, And The Enamoured Youth Mixes Their Form With Moon And Stars, With Woods And Waters, And The Pomp Of Summer. They Heal Us Of Awkwardness By Their Words And Looks. We Observe Their Intellectual Influence On The Most Serious Student. They Refine And Clear His Mind: Teach Him To Put A Pleasing Method Into What Is Dry And Difficult.

Each Religious Sect Has Its Own Physiognomy. The Methodists Have Acquired A Face; The Quakers, A Face; The Nuns, A Face. An Englishman Will Pick Out A Dissenter By His Manners.

Valor Consists In The Power Of Self-recovery, So That A Man Cannot Have His Flank Turned, Cannot Be Out-generalled, But Put Him Where You Will, He Stands.

Words Are Finite Organs Of The Infinite Mind. They Cannot Cover The Dimensions Of What Is In Truth. They Break, Chop, And Impoverish It.

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

To Be A Man Is To Be A Nonconformist.

The Charm Of Fine Manners Is Music And Sculpture And Picture To Many Who Do Not Pretend To Appreciation Of These Arts.

Each Work Of Art Excludes The World, Concentrates Attention On Itself. For The Time It Is The Only Thing Worth Doing -to Do Just That; Be It A Sonnet, A Statue, A Landscape, An Outline Head Of Caesar, Or An Oration. Presently We Return To The Sight Of Another That Globes Itself Into A Whole As Did The First, For Example, A Beautiful Garden; And Nothing Seems Worth Doing In Life But Laying Out A Garden.

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

We Have A Great Deal More Kindness Than Is Ever Spoken.

Luckily For Us, Now That Steam Has Narrowed The Atlantic To A Strait, The Nervous, Rocky West Is Intruding A New And Continental Element Into The National Mind, As We Shall Yet Have An American Genius.

The Wise And Just Man Will Always Feel That He Stands On His Own Feet; That He Imparts Strength To The State, Not Receives Security From It; And If All Went Down, He And Such As He Would Quite Easily Combine In A New And Better Constitution.

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

All Mankind Love A Lover.

As Every Man Is Hunted By His Own Daemon, Vexed By His Own Disease, This Checks All His Activity.

We Know Who Is Benevolent, By Quite Other Means Than The Amount Of Subscriptions To Soup-societies. It Is Only Low Merits That Canbe Enumerated.

If I Have Lost Confidence In Myself, I Have The Universe Against Me.

There Is No Country In Which So Absolute A Homage Is Paid To Wealth. In America There Is A Touch Of Shame When A Man Exhibits Theevidences Of Large Property, As If After All It Needed Apology. But The Englishman Has Pure Pride In His Wealth, And Esteems It A Final Certificate. A Coarse Logic Rules Throughout All English Souls: If You Have Merit, Can You Not Show It By Your Good Clothes And Coach And Horses?

By Virtue Of This Science The Poet Is The Namer, Or Language-maker, Naming Things Sometimes After Their Appearance, Sometimes After Their Essence, And Giving To Every One Its Own Name And Not Another's, Thereby Rejoicing The Intellect, Which Delights In Detachment Or Boundary.

There Are As Many Pillows Of Illusion As Flakes In A Snow-storm. We Wake From One Dream Into Another Dream.

The Hearing Ear Is Always Found Close To The Speaking Tongue; And No Genius Can Long Or Often Utter Anything Which Is Not Invited And Gladly Entertained By Men Around Him.

In Every Company, There Is Not Only The Active And Passive Sex, But, In Both Men And Women, A Deeper And More Important Sex Of Mind, Namely, The Inventive Or Creative Class Of Both Men And Women, And The Uninventive Or Accepting Class.

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

The Worthless And Offensive Members Of Society, Whose Existence Is A Social Pest, Invariably Think Themselves The Most Ill-used People Alive, And Never Get Over Their Astonishment At The Ingratitude And Selfishness Of Their Contemporaries.

Do What You Fear And Your Fear Will Die.

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.

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?

Culture Opens The Sense Of Beauty.

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.

All Sensible People Are Selfish, And Nature Is Tugging At Every Contract To Make The Terms Of It Fair.

Literature Is The Effort Of Man To Indemnify Himself For The Wrongs Of His Condition.

We Say That Every Man Is Entitled To Be Valued By His Best Moment. We Measure Our Friends So. We Know, They Have Intervals Of Folly, Whereof We Take No Heed, But Wait The Reappearings Of The Genius, Which Are Sure And Beautiful.

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

Getting Old Is A Fascination Thing. The Older You Get, The Older You Want To Get.

Envy Is Ignorance, Imitation Is Suicide.

No Man Can Help Another Without Helping Himself.

The Soul Comes From Without Into The Human Body, As Into A Temporary Abode, And It Goes Out Of It Anew It Passes Into Other Habitations, For The Soul Is Immortal." "it Is The Secret Of The World That All Things Subsist And Do Not Die, But Only Retire A Little From Sight And Afterwards Return Again. Nothing Is Dead; Men Feign Themselves Dead, And Endure Mock Funerals... And There They Stand Looking Out Of The Window, Sound And Well, In Some Strange New Disguise.

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

Every Word Was Once A Poem.

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