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

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Law Of Nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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You Never Know How You Look Through Other People's Eyes.

Nature Is A Rag Merchant, Who Works Up Every Shred And Ort And End Into New Creations.

The Language Of The Street Is Always Strong.

At The Gates Of The Forest, The Surprised Man Of The World Is Forced To Leave His City Estimates Of Great And Small, Wise And Foolish. The Knapsack Of Custom Falls Off His Back With The First Step He Makes Into These Precincts. Here Is Sanctity Which Shames Our Religions, And Reality Which Discredits Our Heroes. Here We Find Nature To Be The Circumstance Which Dwarfs Every Other Circumstance, And Judges Like A God All Men That Come To Her.

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.

Imagination Is A Very High Sort Of Seeing.

There Was Never A Child So Lovely But His Mother Was Glad To Get Him To Sleep.

All Men Are Poets At Heart.

Who Hears Me, Who Understands Me, Becomes Mine, A Possession For All Time.

Talent For Talent's Sake Is A Bauble And A Show. Talent Working With Joy In The Cause Of Universal Truth Lifts The Possessor To New Power As A Benefactor.

Evermore In The World Is This Marvelous Balance Of Beauty And Disgust, Magnificence And Rats.

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

No Reason Can Be Asked Or Given Why The Soul Seeks Beauty. Beauty, In Its Largest And Profoundest Sense, Is One Expression For The Universe. God Is The All-fair. Truth, And Goodness, And Beauty, Are But Different Faces Of The Same All.

Different Faces

I Have Come To Believe That The Whole World Is An Enigma, A Harmless Enigma That Is Made Terrible By Our Own Mad Attempt To Interpret It As Though It Had An Underlying Truth. If Two Or Three Persons Should Come With A High Spiritual Aim And With Great Powers, The World Would Fall Into Their Hands Like A Ripe Peach.

Religious Literature Has Eminent Examples, And If We Run Over Our Private List Of Poets, Critics, Philanthropists And Philosophers, We Shall Find Them Infected With This Dropsy And Elephantiasis, Which We Ought To Have Tapped.

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

We Are Ashamed Of Our Thoughts And Often See Them Brought Forth By Others.

'well,' Said Red Jacket [to Someone Complaining That He Had Not Enough Time], 'i Suppose You Have All There Is.'

The Universe Is The Externisation Of The Soul. Wherever The Life Is, That Bursts Into Appearance Around It. Our Science Is Sensual, And Therefore Superficial. The Earth, And The Heavenly Bodies, Physics, And Chemistry, We Sensually Treat, As If They Were Self-existent; But These Are The Retinue Of That Being We Have.

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

Under Every Deep A Lower Deep Opens.

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 Fatal Trait Of The Times Is The Divorce Between Religion And Morality.

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

Classics Which At Home Are Drowsily Read Have A Strange Charm In A Country Inn, Or In The Transom Of A Merchant Brig.

The One Thing In The World, Of Value, Is The Active Soul

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

If You Would Rule The World Quietly, You Must Keep It Amused.

Fear Is An Instructor Of Great Sagacity, And The Herald Of All Revolutions.

For, The Sense Of Being Which In Calm Hours Rises, We Know Not How, In The Soul, Is Not Diverse From Things, From Space, From Light, From Time, From Man, But One With Them, And Proceeds Obviously From The Same Source Whence Their Life And Being Also Proceed. We First Share The Life By Which Things Exist, And Afterwards See Them As Appearances In Nature, And Forget That We Have Shared Their Cause. Here Is The Fountain Of Action And Of Thought.

The Lover Of Nature Is He Whose Inward And Outward Senses Are Still Truly Adjusted To Each Other.

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

Every Man I Meet Is In Some Way My Superior...

The Way To Mend The Bad World Is To Create The Right World.

Nature Tells Every Secret Once.

We See Young Men Who Owe Us A New World, So Readily And Lavishly They Promise, But They Never Acquit The Debt; They Die Young Anddodge The Account: Or If They Live, They Lose Themselves In The Crowd.

A Seashell Should Be The Crest Of England, Not Only Because It Represents A Power Built On The Waves, But Also The Hard Finish Ofthe Men. The Englishman Is Finished Like A Cowry Or A Murex.

The Farmer After Sacrificing Pleasure, Taste, Freedom, Thought, Love, To His Work, Turns Out Often A Bankrupt, Like The Merchant.this Result Might Well Seem Astounding. All This Drudgery, From Cockcrowing To Starlight, For All These Years, To End In Mortgages And The Auctioneer's Flag, And Removing From Bad To Worse. It Is Time To Have The Thing Looked Into, And With A Sifting Criticism Ascertained Who Is The Fool.

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

Eloquence Must Be Grounded On The Plainest Narrative.

The Pest Of Society Is Egotists.

Intellectual Tasting Of Life Will Not Supersede Muscular Activity. If A Man Should Consider The Nicety Of The Passage Of A Piece Of Bread Down His Throat, He Would Starve.

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.

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.

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

Belief And Love,--a Believing Love Will Relieve Us Of A Vast Load Of Care. O My Brothers, God Exists. There Is A Soul At The Centre Of Nature, And Over The Will Of Every Man, So That None Of Us Can Wrong The Universe.

Truth Is Always Present; It Only Needs To Lift The Iron Lids Of The Mind's Eye To Read Its Oracles.

But Genius Is Religious. It Is A Larger Imbibing Of The Common Heart.

I Do Not Wonder At A Snowflake, A Shell, A Summer Landscape, Or The Glory Of The Stars; But At The Necessity Of Beauty Under Which The Universe Lies.

Mysticism Is The Mistake Of An Accidental And Individual Symbol For An Universal One.

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.

When At Last In A Race A New Principle Appears, An Idea--that Conserves It; Ideas Only Save Races.

Universally, The Better Gold The Worse Man. The Political Economist Defies Us To Show Any Gold Mine Country That Is Traversed By Good Roads, Or A Shore Where Pearls Are Found On Which Good Schools Are Erected.

Almost Every Man We Meet Requires Some Civility; Requires To Be Humored; - He Has Some Fame, Some Talent, Some Whim Of Religion Or Philanthropy In His Head That Is Not To Be Questioned, And Which Spoils All Conversation With Him. But A Friend Is A Sane Man Who Exercises Not My Ingenuity, But Me.

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

The Walls Of Rude Minds Are Scrawled All Over With Facts, With Thoughts. They Shall One Day Bring A Lantern And Read The Inscriptions.

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.

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.

All Things Are Known To The Soul.

The Only Sin That We Never Forgive In Each Other Is A Difference In Opinion.

We Are Immersed In Beauty, But Our Eyes Have No Clear Vision.

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.

When We Can't Piece Together The Puzzle Of Our Own Lives, Remember The Best View Of A Puzzle Is From Above. Let Him Help Put You Together.

Accept The Place The Divine Providence Has Found For You, The Society Of Your Contemporaries, The Connection Of Events.

It Now Appears That The Negro Race Is, More Than Any Other, Susceptible Of Rapid Civilization. The Emancipation Is Observed, In The Islands, To Have Wrought For The Negro A Benefit As Sudden As When A Thermometer Is Brought Out Of The Shade Into The Sun. It Has Given Him Eyes And Ears.

Do What We Can, Summer Will Have Its Flies.

What We Seek We Shall Find; What We Flee From Flees From Us.

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

Every Reform Was Once A Private Opinion.

Love Is Like Wildflowers; It's Often Found In The Most Unlikely Places.

Everything Is Beautiful Seen From The Point Of The Intellect, Or As Truth. But All Is Sour If Seen As Experience.

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

Our Prejudices Are Our Robbers, They Rob Us Valuable Things In Life. People Only See What They Are Prepared To See.

My Good Hoe As It Bites The Ground Revenges My Wrongs, And I Have Less Lust To Bite My Enemies. In The Smoothing The Rough Hillocks, I Smooth My Temper.

The Spirit Of The World, The Great Calm Presence Of The Creator, Comes Not Forth To The Sorceries Of Opium Or Of Wine.

Where Do We Find Ourselves? In A Series Of Which We Do Not Know The Extremes, And Believe That It Has None. We Wake And Find Ourselves On A Stair; There Are Stairs Below Us, Which We Seem To Have Ascended; There Are Stairs Above Us, Many A One, Which Go Upward And Out Of Sight.

We Are Such Lovers Of Self-reliance, That We Excuse In A Man Many Sins, If He Will Show Us A Complete Satisfaction In His Position, Which Asks No Leave To Be, Of Mine, Or Any Man's Good Opinion.

The World Makes Way For The Man Who Knows Where He Is Going

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

Nature Never Rhymes Her Children, Nor Makes Two Men Alike. When We See A Great Man, We Fancy A Resemblance To Some Historical Person, And Predict The Sequel Of His Character And Fortune, A Result Which He Is Sure To Disappoint. None Will Ever Solve The Problem Of His Character According To Our Prejudice, But Only In His High Unprecedented Way.

I Think No Virtue Goes With Size;the Reason Of All Cowardiceis, That Men Are Overgrown,and, To Be Valiant, Must Come Downto The Titmouse Dimension.

The Whole Secret Of The Teacher's Force Lies In The Conviction That Men Are Convertible.

Every Man Is An Infinitely Repelling Orb, And Holds His Individual Being On That Condition.

Look Sharply After Your Own Thoughts. They Come Unlooked For, Like A New Bird Seen On Your Trees, And, If You Turn To Your Usual Task, Disappear; And You Shall Never Find That Perception Again; Never, I Say-but Perhaps Years, Ages, And I Know Not What Events And Worlds My Lie Between You And Its Return.

It Has Come To Be Practically A Sort Of Rule In Literature That A Man, Having Once Shown Himself Capable Of Original Writing, Is Entitled Thenceforth To Steal From The Writings Of Others At Discretion.

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

We Do Not Quite Forgive A Giver. The Hand That Feeds Us Is In Some Danger Of Being Bitten. We Can Receive Anything From Love, Forthat Is A Way Of Receiving It From Ourselves; But Not From Any One Who Assumes To Bestow. We Sometimes Hate The Meat Which We Eat, Because There Seems Something Of Degrading Dependence In Living It.

War Disorganizes, But It Is To Reorganize.

The Best Picture Makes Us Say, I Am A Painter Also.

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

People Do Not Deserve To Have Good Writing, They Are So Pleased With Bad.

As The Sandwich Islander Believes That The Strength And Valor Of The Enemy He Kills Passes Into Himself, So We Gain The Strength Of The Temptation We Resist.

Finish Each Day And Be Done With It. You Have Done What You Could. Learn From It... Tomorrow Is A New Day.

Another Sort Of False Prayers Are Our Regrets. Discontent Is The Way Of Self-reliance: It Is Infirmity Of Will. Regret Calamities, If You Can Thereby Help The Sufferer; If Not, Attend Your Own Work, And Already The Evil Begins To Be Repaired.

Nor Sequent Centuries Could Hit Orbit And Sum Of Shakspeare's Wit. The Men Who Lived With Him Became Poets, For The Air Was Fame.

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

Words Are Finite Expressions Of The Infinite Mind.

In The Greek Cities, It Was Reckoned Profane, That Any Person Should Pretend A Property In A Work Of Art, Which Belonged To All Who Could Behold It.

Democracy Is Morose, And Runs To Anarchy, But In The State, And In The Schools, It Is Indispensable To Resist The Consolidation Ofall Men Into A Few Men.

Men Talk As If Victory Were Something Fortunate. Work Is Victory.

If We Live Truly, We Shall See Truly. It Is As Easy For The Strong Man To Be Strong, As It Is For The Weak To Be Weak.

So All That Is Said Of The Wise Man By Stoic Or Oriental Or Modern Essayist, Describes To Each Reader His Own Idea, Describes His Unattained But Attainable Self.

Providence Has A Wild, Rough, Incalculable Road To Its End, And It Is Of No Use To Try To Whitewash Its Huge, Mixed Instrumentalities, Or To Dress Up That Terrific Benefactor In A Clean Shirt And White Neckcloth Of A Student In Divinity.

This Immediate Dependence Of Language Upon Nature, This Conversion Of An Outward Phenomenon Into A Type Of Somewhat In Human Life,never Loses Its Power To Affect Us. It Is This Which Gives That Piquancy To The Conversation Of A Strong-natured Farmer Or Backwoodsman, Which All Men Relish.

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

When All Shoot At One Mark, The Gods Join In The Combat.

The Virtues Of Society Are The Vices Of The Saints.

That Which We Do Not Call Education Is More Precious Than That Which We Call So.

The Bulk Of Mankind Believe In Two Gods. They Are Under One Dominion Here In The House, As Friend And Parent, In Social Circles, In Letters, In Art, In Love, In Religion; But In Mechanics, In Dealing With Steam And Climate, In Trade, In Politics, They Think They Come Under Another.

England Produces Under Favorable Conditions Of Ease And Culture The Finest Women In The World. And, As The Men Are Affectionate And True-hearted, The Women Inspire And Refine Them.

How Much Of Human Life Is Lost In Waiting.

I Honor Health As The First Muse.

The Same, The Same: Friend And Foe Are Of One Stuff; The Ploughman, The Plough, And The Furrow, Are Of One Stuff; And The Stuff Is Such, And So Much, That The Variations Of Form Are Unimportant.

Nature Is Not Always Tricked In Holiday Attire, But The Same Scene Which Yesterday Breathed Perfume And Glittered As For The Frolic Of The Nymphs, Is Overspread With Melancholy Today. Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit.

The True Test Of Civilization Is Not The Census, Nor The Size Of Cities, Nor The Crops - No, But The Kind Of Man The Country Turns Out.

Do Not Speak Of God Much. After A Very Little Conversation On The Highest Nature, Thought Deserts Us And We Run Into Formalism.

The Leaves Are Falling, Falling As From Way Off, As Though Far Gardens Withered In The Skies; They Are Falling With Denying Gestures. And In The Nights The Heavy Earth Is Falling From All The Stars Down Into Loneliness. We All Are Falling. This Hand Falls. And Look At Others: It Is In Them All. And Yet There Is One Who Holds This Falling Endlessly Gently In His Hands.

Men Have Sometimes Exchanged Names With Their Friends, As If They Would Signify That In Their Friend Each Loved His Own Soul.

A Person's Life Is Limited But Serving The People Is Limitless. I Want To Devote My Limited Life To Serving The People Limitlessly.

We Prize Books, And They Prize Them Most Who Are Themselves Wise.

There Is A Kind Of Latent Omniscience, Not Only In Every Man, But In Every Particle.

He Thought It Happier To Be Dead, To Die For Beauty, Than Live For Bread

The Two Terrors That Discourage Creativity And Creative Living Are Fear Of Public Opinion And Undue Reverence For One's Own Consistency.

In Dealing With The State, We Ought To Remember That Its Institutions Are Not Aboriginal, Though They Existed Before We Were Born; That They Are Not Superior To The Citizen; That Every One Of Them Was Once The Act Of A Single Man; Every Law And Usage Was A Man's Expedient To Meet A Particular Case; That They All Are Imitable, All Alterable; We May Make As Good; We May Make Better.

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.

Real Action Is In Silent Moments.

I Have Heard That Whoever Loves Is In No Condition Old. I Have Heard That Whenever The Name Of Man Is Spoken, The Doctrine Of Immortality Is Announced; It Cleaves To His Constitution. The Mode Of It Baffles Our Wit, And No Whisper Comes To Us From The Other Side. But The Inference From The Working Of Intellect, Hiving Knowledge, Hiving Skill,--at The End Of Life Just Ready To Be Born,--affirms The Inspirations Of Affection And Of The Moral Sentiment.

Intellect Is Void Of Affection And Sees An Object As It Stands In The Light Of Science, Cool And Disengaged. The Intellect Goes Out Of The Individual, Floats Over Its Own Personality, And Regards It As A Fact, And Not As I And Mine.

In Old Persons, When Thus Fully Expressed, We Often Observe A Fair, Plump, Perennial Waxen Complexion, Which Indicates That All The Ferment Of Earlier Days Has Subsided Into Serenity Of Thought And Behavior.

If Thou Fill Thy Brain With Boston And New York, With Fashion And Covetousness, And Wilt Stimulate Thy Jaded Senses With Wine And French Coffee, Thou Shalt Find No Radiance Of Wisdom In The Lonely Waste Of The Pinewoods.

Why Should We Grope Among The Dry Bones Of The Past? The Sun Shines Today Also.

It Is Very Unhappy, But Too Late To Be Helped, The Discovery We Have Made, That We Exist

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

The Visible Heavens And Earth Sympathize With Jesus.

All Things Are Moral. That Soul, Which Within Us Is A Sentiment, Outside Of Us Is A Law. We Feel Its Inspiration; Out There In History We Can See Its Fatal Strength.

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.

A Few Years Ago, The Liberal Churches Complained That The Calvinistic Church Denied To Them The Name Of Christian. I Think The Complaint Was Confession; A Religious Church Would Not Complain.

What Is Well Done, I Feel As If I Did; What Is Ill-done, I Reck Not Of.

Society Is A Masked Ball, Where Every One Hides His Real Character, And Reveals It By Hiding.

Wherever Snow Falls, Or Water Flows, Or Birds Fly, Wherever Day And Night Meet In Twilight, Wherever The Blue Heaven Is Hung By Clouds, Or Sown With Stars, Wherever Are Forms With Transparent Boundaries, Wherever Are Outlets Into Celestial Space, Wherever Is Danger, And Awe, And Love, There Is Beauty, Plenteous As Rain, Shed For Thee, And Though Thou Shouldest Walk The World Over, Thou Shalt Not Be Able To Find A Condition Inopportune Or Ignoble.

A Part Of Fate Is The Freedom Of Man. Forever Wells Up The Impulse Of Choosing And Acting In His Soul.

As Many Languages As He Has, As Many Friends, As Many Arts And Trades, So Many Times Is He A Man.

Since Everything In Nature Answers To A Moral Power, If Any Phenomenon Remains Brute And Dark, It Is That The Corresponding Faculty In The Observer Is Not Yet Active.

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

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.

I Shun Father And Mother And Wife And Brother When My Genius Calls Me. I Would Write On The Lintels Of The Door-post, Whim. I Hope That It Is Somewhat Better Than Whim At Last, But We Cannot Spend The Day In Explanation.

Liberty Is A Slow Fruit.

The Field Cannot Be Well Seen From Within The Field. The Astronomer Must Have His Diameter Of The Earth's Orbit As A Base To Fix The Parallax Of Any Other Star

A Party Is Perpetually Corrupted By Personality.

It Is Sublime To Think And Say Of Another, I Need Never Meet, Or Speak, Or Write To Him: We Need Not Reinforce Ourselves, Or Send Tokens Of Remembrance; I Rely On Him As On Myself: If He Did Thus And Thus, I Know It Was Right.

We Commonly Say That The Rich Man Can Speak The Truth, Can Afford Honesty, Can Afford Independence Of Opinion And Action;--and That Is The Theory Of Nobility. But It Is The Rich Man In A True Sense, That Is To Say, Not The Man Of Large Income And Large Expenditure, But Solely The Man Whose Outlay Is Less Than His Income And Is Steadily Kept So.

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.

I Find Nothing In Fables More Astonishing Than My Experience In Every Hour. One Moment Of A Man's Life Is A Fact So Stupendous As To Take The Luster Out Of Fiction.

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.

Thought Is The Property Of Him Who Can Entertain It, And Of Him Who Can Adequately Place It.

Great Geniuses Have The Shortest Biographies.

It Is One Of The Biggest Blessing That You Can Be Stupid With Your True Friends And Behave Like You Shame To Do Elsewhere

Some Men Love Only To Talk Where They Are Masters. They Like To Go To School-girls, Or To Boys, Or Into The Shops Where The Sauntering People Gladly Lend An Ear.

Nature Turns All Malfaisance To Good.

Art Is The Need To Create; But In Its Essence, Immense And Universal, It Is Impatient Of Working With Lame Or Tied Hands, And Of Making Cripples And Monsters, Such As All Pictures And Statues Are. Nothing Less Than The Creation Of Man And Nature Is Its End.

We Say Love Is Blind, And The Figure Of Cupid Is Drawn With A Bandage Around His Eyes. Blind - Yes, Because He Does Not See What He Does Not Like; But The Sharpest-sighted Hunter In The Universe Is Love For Finding What He Seeks, And Only That.

Desire Is Possibility Seeking Expression.

When Good Is Near You, When You Have Life In Yourself, It Is Not By Any Known Or Accustomed Way; You Shall Not Discern The Foot-prints Of Any Other; You Shall Not See The Face Of Man; You Shall Not Hear Any Name; The Way, The Thought, The Good, Shall Be Wholly Strange And New. It Shall Exclude Example And Experience.

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.

The Years Teach Much Which The Days Never Know.

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

Nature, Through All Her Kingdoms, Insures Herself.

Nature Is Methodical, And Doeth Her Work Well. Time Is Never To Be Hurried.

To The Birds And Trees He Talks: Caesar Of His Leafy Rome, There The Poet Is At Home.

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

Meek Young Men Grow Up In Libraries.

God Has Delegated Himself To A Million Deputies.

No One Can Read The History Of Astronomy Without Perceiving That Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, Are Not New Men, Or A New Kind Of Men, But That Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, Had Anticipated Them.

To Laugh Often And Love Much; To Win The Respect Of Intelligent Persons And The Affection Of Children; To Earn The Approbation Of Honest Critics And Endure The Betrayal Of False Friends; To Appreciate Beauty.

On The Other Side, The Conservative Party, Composed Of The Most Moderate, Able, And Cultivated Part Of The Population, Is Timid, And Merely Defensive Of Property. It Vindicates No Right, It Aspires To No Real Good, It Brands No Crime, It Proposes No Generous Policy, It Does Not Build, Nor Write, Nor Cherish The Arts, Nor Foster Religion, Nor Establish Schools, Nor Encourage Science, Nor Emancipate The Slave, Nor Befriend The Poor, Or The Indian, Or The Immigrant.

Pain, Indolence, Sterility, Endless Ennui Have Also Their Lesson For You, If You Are Great.

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.

The Eloquent Man Is He Who Is No Beautiful Speaker, But Who Is Inwardly And Desperately Drunk With A Certain Belief.

Research Is Not Seeing What Others Do Not See, It Is Seeing The Same Thing As Other People And Thinking What They Do Not.

Most Of The Classical Citations You Shall Hear Or Read In The Current Journals Or Speeches Were Not Drawn From The Originals, But From Previous Quotations In English Books.

A Man Should Have A Farm Or A Mechanical Craft For His Culture. We Must Have A Basis For Our Higher Accomplishments, Our Delicate Entertainments Of Poetry And Philosophy, In The Work Of Our Hands.

Go Where He Will, The Wise Man Is At Home, His Hearth The Earth, His Hall The Azure Dome.

The Doctrine Of Necessity Or Destiny Is The Doctrine Of Toleration.

Go Forth Into The Busy World And Love It. Interest Yourself In Its Life, Mingle Kindly With Its Joys And Sorrows.

When A Man Meets His Make, Society Begins.

I Cannot Find Language Of Sufficient Energy To Convey My Sense Of The Sacredness Of Private Integrity. All Men, All Things, The State, The Church, Yea The Friends Of The Heart Are Phantasms And Unreal Beside The Sanctuary Of The Heart. With So Much Awe, With So Much Fear, Let It Be Respected.

We Are Always Getting Ready To Live, But Never Living... The Wave Moves Onward But The Particles Of Which It Is Composed Do Not... It Cannot Be But That At Intervals Throughout Society There Are Real Men Intermixed . . . As The Carpenter Puts One Iron Bar In His Bannister For Every Five Or Six Wooden Ones.

There Is One Mind Common To All Individual Men. Every Man Is An Inlet To The Same And To All Of The Same. He That Is Once Admitted To The Right Of Reason Is Made A Freeman Of The Whole Estate. What Plato Has Thought, He May Think; What A Saint Has Felt, He May Feel; What At Any Time Has Befallen Any Man, He Can Understand. Who Hath Access To This Universal Mind Is A Party To All That Is Or Can Be Done, For This Is The Only And Sovereign Agent

If You Have A Nation Of Men Who Have Risen To That Height Of Moral Cultivation That They Will Not Declare War Or Carry Arms, For They Have Not So Much Madness Left In Their Brains, You Have A Nation Of Lovers, Of Benefactors, Of True, Great, And Able Men.

Bonaparte Knew But One Merit, And Rewarded In One And The Same Way The Good Soldier, The Good Astronomer, The Good Poet, The Good Player.

The Ocean Is A Large Drop; A Drop Is A Small Ocean.

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 Delicious Faces Of Children, The Beauty Of School-girls, "the Sweet Seriousness Of Sixteen," The Lofty Air Of Well-born, Well-bred Boys, The Passionate Histories In The Looks And Manners Of Youth And Early Manhood, And The Varied Power In All That Well-known Company That Escort Us Through Life,--we Know How These Forms Thrill, Paralyze, Provoke, Inspire, And Enlarge Us.

The Great Make Its Feel, First Of All, The Indifference Of Circumstances. They Call Into Activity The Higher Perceptions, And Subdue The Low Habits Of Comfort And Luxury; But The Higher Perceptions Find Their Objects Everywhere; Only The Low Habits Need Palaces And Banquets.

Stay At Home In Your Mind. Don't Recite Other People's Opinions.

For, The Advantages Which Fashion Values, Are Plants Which Thrive In Very Confined Localities, In A Few Streets, Namely. Out Of This Precinct, They Go For Nothing; Are Of No Use In The Farm, In The Forest, In The Market, In War, In The Nuptial Society, In The Literary Or Scientific Circle, At Sea, In Friendship, In The Heaven Of Thought Or Virtue.

Every Reform Was Once A Private Opinion, And When It Shall Be A Private Opinion Again, It Will Solve The Problem Of The Age.

My Life Should Be Unique; It Should Be An Alms, A Battle, A Conquest, A Medicine.

Ah Fate, Cannot A Man Be Wise Without A Beard? East, West, From Beer To Dan, Say, Was It Never Heard That Wisdom Might In Youth Be Gotten, Or Wit Be Ripe Before 't Was Rotten?

The President Proclaims War, And Those Senators Who Dissent Are Not Those Who Know Better, But Those Who Can Afford To...democracy Becomes A Government Of Bullies Tempered By Editors.

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Gro Harlem Brundtland

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