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The Meaning Of Song Goes Deep. Who In Logical Words Can Explain The Effect Music Has On Us? A Kind Of Inarticulate, Unfathomable Speech, Which Leads Us To The Edge Of The Infinite, And Lets Us For A Moment Gaze Into That!

-Thomas Carlyle

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The Meaning Of Song

Thomas Carlyle

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The Meaning Of Song Goes Deep. Who In Logical Words Can Explain The Effect Music Has On Us? A Kind Of Inarticulate, Unfathomable Speech, Which Leads Us To The Edge Of The Infinite, And Lets Us For A Moment Gaze Into That!

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The Man Of Life Upright Has A Guiltless Heart, Free From All Dishonest Deeds Or Thought Of Vanity.

Creation Is Great, And Cannot Be Understood.

What The Light Of Your Mind, Which Is The Direct Inspiration Of The Almighty, Pronounces Incredible, That, In God's Name, Leave Uncredited. At Your Peril Do Not Try Believing That!

The Glory Of A Workman, Still More Of A Master Workman, That He Does His Work Well, Ought To Be His Most Precious Possession; Like The Honor Of A Soldier, Dearer To Him Than Life.

Professors Of The Dismal Science, I Perceive The Length Of Your Tether Is Now Pretty Well Run; And I Must Request You To Talk A Little Lower In The Future.

One Must Verify Or Expel His Doubts, And Convert Them Into The Certainty Of Yes Or No.

The Builder Of This Universe Was Wise, He Plann'd All Souls, All Systems, Planets, Particles: The Plan He Shap'd All Worlds And Æons By, Was-heavens!-was Thy Small Nine-and-thirty Articles!

Democracy Means Despair Of Finding Any Heroes To Govern You, And Contented Putting Up With The Want Of Them.

The Christian Must Be Consumed By The Conviction Of The Infinite Beauty Of Holiness And The Infinite Damnability Of Sin.

Infinite Beauty

I Had A Lifelong Quarrel With God, But In The End We Made Up.

The Times Are Very Bad. Very Well, You Are There To Make Them Better.

The Purpose Of Man Is In Action Not Thought.

Rich As We Are In Biography, A Well-written Life Is Almost As Rare As A Well-spent One; And There Are Certainly Many More Men Whose History Deserves To Be Recorded Than Persons Willing And Able To Record It.

Quackery Gives Birth To Nothing; Gives Death To All Things.

All That A University Or Final Highest School. Can Do For Us Is Still But What The First School Began Doing--teach Us To Read. We Learn To Read In Various Languages, In Various Sciences; We Learn The Alphabet And Letters Of All Manner Of Books. But The Place Where We Are To Get Knowledge, Even Theoretic Knowledge, Is The Books Themselves. It Depends On What We Read, After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

Oblivion Is The Dark Page, Whereon Memory Writes Her Light-beam Characters, And Makes Them Legible; Were It All Light, Nothing Could Be Read There, Any More Than If It Were All Darkness.

History Is The Essence Of Innumerable Biographies.

Imperfection Clings To A Person, And If They Wait Till They Are Brushed Off Entirely, They Would Spin For Ever On Their Axis, Advancing Nowhere.

Writing Is A Dreadful Labor, Yet Not So Dreadful As Idleness.

The Age Of Miracles Is Forever Here.

Obedience Is Our Universal Duty And Destiny; Wherein Whoso Will Not Bend Must Break; Too Early And Too Thoroughly We Cannot Be Trained To Know That "would," In This World Of Ours, Is A Mere Zero To "should," And For Most Part As The Smallest Of Fractions Even To "shall.

The First Sin In Our Universe Was Lucifer's Self Conceit.

Innumerable Are The Illusions And Legerdemain-tricks Of Custom: But Of All Of These, Perhaps The Cleverest Is Her Knack Of Persuading Us That The Miraculous, By Simple Repetition, Ceases To Be Miraculous.

Popular Opinion Is The Greatest Lie In The World.

Man's Unhappiness, As I Construe, Comes Of His Greatness; It Is Because There Is An Infinite In Him, With Which All His Cunning He Cannot Quite Bury Under The Finite... Try Him With Half Of A Universe, Of An Omnipotence, He Sets To Quarreling With The Proprietor Of The Other Half, And Declares Himself The Most Maltreated Of Men. Always There Is A Black Spot In Our Sunshine: It Is Even, As I Said, The Shadow Of Ourselves.

Not On Morality, But On Cookery, Let Us Build Our Stronghold: There Brandishing Our Frying-pan, As Censer, Let Us Offer Sweet Incense To The Devil, And Live At Ease On The Fat Things He Has Provided For His Elect!

Clever Men Are Good, But They Are Not The Best.

Let Time And Chance Combine, Combine! Let Time And Chance Combine! The Fairest Love From Heaven Above, That Love Of Yours Was Mine, My Dear! That Love Of Yours Was Mine.

Genius Is An Infinite Capacity For Taking Pains.

Who Is It That Loves Me And Will Love Me Forever With An Affection Which No Chance, No Misery, No Crime Of Mine Can Do Away? It Is You, My Mother.

A Man--be The Heavens Ever Praised!--is Sufficient For Himself.

The Lies (western Slander) Which Well-meaning Zeal Has Heaped Round This Man (muhammad) Are Disgraceful To Ourselves Only.

Long Stormy Spring-time, Wet Contentious April, Winter Chilling The Lap Of Very May; But At Length The Season Of Summer Does Come.

The Public Is Anold Woman.let Her Maunderand Mumble.

Let Him Who Would Move And Convince Others, Be First Moved And Convinced Himself.

Stern Accuracy In Inquiring, Bold Imagination In Describing, These Are The Cogs On Which History Soars Or Flutters And Wobbles.

Great Souls Are Always Loyally Submissive, Reverent To What Is Over Them: Only Small Mean Souls Are Otherwise.

In Idleness There Is A Perpetual Despair.

Shakespeare Says, We Are Creatures That Look Before And After; The More Surprising That We Do Not Look Around A Little, And See What Is Passing Under Our Very Eyes.

What We Become Depends On What We Read After All Of The Professors Have Finished With Us. The Greatest University Of All Is A Collection Of Books.

Over The Times Thou Hast No Power. . . . Solely Over One Man Thou Hast Quite Absolute Power. Him Redeem And Make Honest.

Men Are To Be Guided Only By Their Self-interests. Good Government Is A Good Balancing Of These; And, Except A Keen Eye And Appetite For Self-interest, Requires No Virtue In Any Quarter. To Both Parties It Is Emphatically A Machine: To The Discontented, A Taxing-machine; To The Contented, A Machine For Securing Property. Its Duties And Its Faults Are Not Those Of A Father, But Of An Active Parish-constable.

He Who Takes Not Counsel Of The Unseen And Silent, From Him Will Never Come Real Visibility And Speech.

The Present Is The Living Sum-total Of The Whole Past.

Egotism Is The Source And Summary Of All Faults And Miseries.

Have A Purpose In Life, And Having It, Throw Into Your Work Such Strength Of Mind And Muscle As God Has Given You.

A False Man Found A Religion? Why, A False Man Cannot Build A Brick House!

If What You Have Done Is Unjust, You Have Not Succeeded.

I've Got A Great Ambition To Die Of Exhaustion Rather Than Boredom.

Dishonesty Is The Raw Material Not Of Quacks Only, But Also In Great Part Dupes.

The Work An Unknown Good Man Has Done Is Like A Vein Of Water Flowing Hidden Underground, Secretly Making The Ground Green.

We Observe With Confidence That The Truly Strong Mind, View It As Intellect Or Morality, Or Under Any Other Aspect, Is Nowise The Mind Acquainted With Its Strength; That Here The Sign Of Health Is Unconsciousness.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

I Have Seen Gleams In The Face And Eyes Of The Man That Have Let You Look Into A Higher Country.

Even In The Meanest Sorts Of Labor, The Whole Soul Of A Man Is Composed Into A Kind Of Real Harmony The Instant He Sets Himself To Work.

The Choking, Sweltering, Deadly, And Killing Rule Of No Rule; The Consecration Of Cupidity And Braying Of Folly, And Dim Stupidity And Baseness, In Most Of The Affairs Of Men. Slopshirts Attainable Three-halfpence Cheaper By The Ruin Of Living Bodies And Immortal Souls.

Thou Fool! Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom; That Idle Crag Thou Sittest On Is Six Thousand Years Of Age.

We Have Our Little Theory On All Human And Divine Things. Poetry, The Workings Of Genius Itself, Which, In All Times, With One Or Another Meaning, Has Been Called Inspiration, And Held To Be Mysterious And Inscrutable, Is No Longer Without Its Scientific Exposition. The Building Of The Lofty Rhyme Is Like Any Other Masonry Or Bricklaying: We Have Theories Of Its Rise, Height, Decline And Fall -- Which Latter, It Would Seem, Is Now Near, Among All People.

Work Is The Grand Cure Of All The Maladies And Miseries That Ever Beset Mankind.

He That Works And Does Some Poem, Not He That Merely Says One, Is Worthy Of The Name Of Poet.

Great Is Journalism. Is Not Every Able Editor A Ruler Of The World, Being The Persuader Of It?

It Is A Vain Hope To Make People Happy By Politics.

I Grow Daily To Honor Facts More And More, And Theory Less And Less.

Misery Which, Through Long Ages, Had No Spokesman, No Helper, Will Now Be Its Own Helper And Speak For Itself.

Prayer Is And Remains Always A Native And Deepest Impulse Of The Soul Of Man.

Not Our Logical, Mensurative Faculty, But Our Imaginative One Is King Over Us; I Might Say, Priest And Prophet To Lead Us Heavenward; Or Magician And Wizard To Lead Us Hellward.

Let Him Who Gropes Painfully In Darkness Or Uncertain Light, And Prays Vehemently That The Dawn May Ripen Into Day, Lay This Precept Well To Heart: "do The Duty Which Lies Nearest To Thee," Which Thou Know To Be A Duty! Thy Second Duty Will Already Have Become Clearer.

Are We Not Spirits, That Are Shaped Into A Body, Into An Appearance; And That Fade Away Again Into Air And Invisibility? Oh, Heaven, It Is Mysterious, It Is Awful To Consider That We Not Only Carry A Future Ghost Within Us; But Are, In Very Deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, Whence Had We Them; This Stormy Force; This Life-blood With Its Burning Passion? They Are Dust And Shadow; A Shadow-system Gathered Round Our Me; Wherein, Through Some Moments Or Years, The Divine Essence Is To Be Revealed In The Flesh.

Every New Opinion, At Its Starting, Is Precisely In A Minority Of One.

Not What You Possess But What You Do With What You Have, Determines Your True Worth.

Overconsumption

Originality Is A Thing We Constantly Clamour For, And Constantly Quarrel With.

Funny Basketball

Thought, True Labor Of Any Kind, Highest Virtue Itself, Is It Not The Daughter Of Pain?

Parties On The Back Of Parties, At War With The World And With Each Other.

The Cut Of A Garment Speaks Of Intellect And Talent And The Color Of Temperament And Heart.

Make Yourself An Honest Man, And Then You May Be Sure There Is One Less Rascal In The World.

In The True Literary Man There Is Thus Ever, Acknowledged Or Not By The World, A Sacredness: He Is The Light Of The World; The World's Priest; -- Guiding It, Like A Sacred Pillar Of Fire, In Its Dark Pilgrimage Through The Waste Of Time.

Money Will Buy Money's Worth; But The Thing Men Call Fame, What Is It?

Force, Force, Everywhere Force; We Ourselves A Mysterious Force In The Centre Of That. "there Is Not A Leaf Rotting On The Highway But Has Force In It: How Else Could It Rot?" [as Used In His Time, By The Word Force, Carlyle Means Energy.]

Secrecy Is The Element Of All Goodness; Even Virtue, Even Beauty Is Mysterious.

The Wise Man Is But A Clever Infant, Spelling Letters From A Hieroglyphical Prophetic Book, The Lexicon Of Which Lies In Eternity.

Piety Does Not Mean That A Man Should Make A Sour Face About Things, And Refuse To Enjoy In Moderation What His Maker Has Given.

Laughter Means Sympathy.

For The Superior Morality, Of Which We Hear So Much, We Too Would Desire To Be Thankful: At The Same Time, It Were But Blindness To Deny That This Superior Morality Is Properly Rather An Inferior Criminality, Produced Not By Greater Love Of Virtue, But By Greater Perfection Of Police; And Of That Far Subtler And Stronger Police, Called Public Opinion.

Properly Speaking, All True Work Is Religion.

The Great Soul Of This World Is Just.

Statistics Is A Science Which Ought To Be Honourable, The Basis Of Many Most Important Sciences; But It Is Not To Be Carried On By Steam, This Science, Any More Than Others Are; A Wise Head Is Requisite For Carrying It On.

Neither Let Mistakes And Wrong Directions - Of Which Every Man, In His Studies And Elsewhere, Falls Into Many - Discourage You. There Is Precious Instruction To Be Got By Finding That We Are Wrong. Let A Man Try Faithfully, Manfully To Be Right, He Will Grow Daily More And More Right. It Is, At Bottom, The Condition Which All Men Have To Cultivate Themselves. Our Very Walking Is An Incessant Falling - A Falling And A Catching Of Ourselves Before We Come Actually To The Pavement! - It Is Emblematic Of All Things A Man Does.

High Air-castles Are Cunningly Built Of Words, The Words Well Bedded Also In Good Logic-mortar; Wherein, However, No Knowledge Will Come To Lodge.

In Every Object There Is Inexhaustible Meaning.

He That Will Not Work According To His Faculty, Let Him Perish According To His Necessity: There Is No Law Juster Than That.

Who Is There That, In Logical Words, Can Express The Effect Music Has On Us?

Society Is Founded On Hero-worship.

Literature Is The Thought Of Thinking Souls.

The Meaning Of Song Goes Deep. Who In Logical Words Can Explain The Effect Music Has On Us? A Kind Of Inarticulate, Unfathomable Speech, Which Leads Us To The Edge Of The Infinite, And Lets Us For A Moment Gaze Into That!

If Time Is Precious, No Book That Will Not Improve By Repeated Readings Deserves To Be Read At All.

He That Can Work Is Born To Be King Of Something.

The Insignificant, The Empty, Is Usually The Loud; And After The Manner Of A Drum, Is Louder Even Because Of Its Emptiness.

It Is Through Symbols That Man Consciously Or Unconsciously Lives, Works And Has His Being.

We Have Not Read An Author Till We Have Seen His Object, Whatever It May Be, As He Saw It.

Narrative Is Linear, But Action Has Breadth And Depth As Well As Height And Is Solid.

The Vulgarity Of Inanimate Things Requires Time To Get Accustomed To; But Living, Breathing, Bustling, Plotting, Planning, Human Vulgarity Is A Species Of Moral Ipecacuanha, Enough To Destroy Any Comfort.

A Man Must Indeed Be A Hero To Appear Such In The Eyes Of His Valet.

Reform Is Not Pleasant, But Grievous; No Person Can Reform Themselves Without Suffering And Hard Work, How Much Less A Nation.

Authors Are The Vanguard In The March Of Mind, The Intellectual Backwoodsmen, Reclaiming From The Idle Wilderness New Territories For The Thought And Activity Of Their Happier Brethren.

When I Gaze Into The Stars, They Look Down Upon Me With Pity From Their Serene And Silent Spaces, Like Eyes Glistening With Tears Over The Little Lot Of Man. Thousands Of Generations, All As Noisy As Our Own, Have Been Swallowed Up By Time, And There Remains No Record Of Them Any More. Yet Arcturus And Orion, Sirius And Pleiades, Are Still Shining In Their Courses, Clear And Young, As When The Shepherd First Noted Them In The Plain Of Shinar!

Laws, Written, If Not On Stone Tables, Yet On The Azure Of Infinitude, In The Inner Heart Of God's Creation, Certain As Life, Certain As Death, Are There, And Thou Shalt Not Disobey Them.

The Situation That Has Not Its Duty, Its Ideal, Was Never Yet Occupied By Man. Yes, Here, In This Poor, Miserable, Hampered, Despicable Actual, Wherein Thou Even Now Standest, Here Or Nowhere Is Thy Ideal; Work It Out Therefrom, And, Working, Believe, Live, Be Free. Fool! The Ideal Is In Thyself.

It Is In General More Profitable To Reckon Up Our Defeats Than To Boast Of Our Attainments.

O Poor Mortals, How Ye Make This Earth Bitter For Each Other.

Cherish What Is Dearest While You Have It Near You, And Wait Not Till It Is Far Away. Blind And Deaf That We Are; Oh, Think, If Thou Yet Love Anybody Living, Wait Not Till Death Sweep Down The Paltry Little Dust Clouds And Dissonances Of The Moment, And All Be Made At Last So Mournfully Clear And Beautiful, When It Is Too Late.

To Each Is Given A Certain Inward Talent, A Certain Outward Environment Or Fortune; To Each By Wisest Combination Of These Two, A Certain Maximum Capacity.

Midas-eared Mammonism, Double-barrelled Dilettantism, And Their Thousand Adjuncts And Corollaries, Are Not The Law By Which God Almighty Has Appointed This His Universe To Go.

Rest Is For The Dead.

Wealth Of A Man Is The Number Of Things Which He Loves And Blesses Which He Is Loved And Blessed By.

"love Is Not Altogether A Delirium," Says He Elsewhere; "yet Has It Many Points In Common Therewith."

Delirium Tremens

The Spiritual Is The Parent Of The Practical.

All Great Peoples Are Conservative.

The Greatest Of All Heroes Is One--whom We Do Not Name Here! Let Sacred Silence Meditate That Sacred Matter; You Will Find It The Ultimate Perfection Of A Principle Extant Throughout Man's Whole History On Earth.

Every Poet, Be His Outward Lot What It May, Finds Himself Born In The Midst Of Prose; H E Has To Struggle From The Littleness And Obstruction Of An Actual World Into The Freedom And Infinitude Of An Ideal.

Venerable To Me Is The Hard Hand,--crooked, Coarse,--wherein, Notwithstanding, Lies A Cunning Virtue, Indispensably Royal As Of The Sceptre Of The Planet.

One Is Hardly Sensible Of Fatigue While He Marches To Music.

A Mind That Has Seen, And Suffered, And Done, Speaks To Us Of What It Has Tried And Conquered.

In No Time Whatever Can Small Critics Entirely Eradicate Out Of Living Men's Hearts A Certain Altogether Peculiar Collar Reverence For Great Men--genuine Admiration, Loyalty, Adora-tion.

Out Of Eternity The New Day Is Born; Into Eternity At Night Will Return.

I Too Acknowledge The All-out Omnipotence Of Early Culture And Nature; Hereby We Have Either A Doddered Dwarf-bush, Or A High-towering, Wide-shadowing Tree! Either A Sick Yellow Cabbage, Or An Edible Luxuriant Green One. Of A Truth, It Is The Duty Of All Men, Especially Of All Philosophers, To Note Down With Accuracy The Characteristic Circumstances Of Their Education,--what Furthered, What Hindered, What In Any Way Modified It.

The End Of Man Is An Action, And Not A Thought, Though It Were The Noblest?

They Have Their Belief, These Poor Tibet People, That Providence Sends Down Always An Incarnation Of Himself Into Every Generation. At Bottom Some Belief In A Kind Of Pope! At Bottom Still Better, A Belief That There Is A Greatest Man; That He Is Discoverable; That, Once Discovered, We Ought To Treat Him With An Obedience Which Knows No Bounds. This Is The Truth Of Grand Lamaism; The "discoverability" Is The Only Error Here.

This We Take It Is The Grand Characteristic Of Our Age. By Our Skill In Mechanism, It Has Come To Pass, That In The Management Ofexternal Things We Excel All Other Ages; While In Whatever Respects The Pure Moral Nature, In True Dignity Of Soul And Character, We Are Perhaps Inferior To Most Civilised Ages.

History Is Philosophy Teaching By Experience.

There Can Be No Acting Or Doing Of Any Kind Till It Be Recognized That There Is A Thing To Be Done; The Thing Once Recognized, Doing In A Thousand Shapes Becomes Possible.

Democracy Will Itself Accomplish The Salutary Universal Change From Delusive To Real, And Make A New Blessed World Of Us By And By.

It Is Not To Taste Sweet Things; But To Do Noble And True Things, And Vindicate Himself Under God's Heaven As A God-made Man, That The Poorest Son Of Adam Dimly Longs. Show Him The Way Of Doing That, The Dullest Day-drudge Kindles Into A Hero. They Wrong Man Greatly Who Say He Is To Be Seduced By Ease. Difficulty, Abnegation, Martyrdom, Death, Are The Allurements That Act On The Heart Of Man. Kindle The Inner Genial Life Of Him, You Have A Flame That Burns Up All Lower Considerations.

Teaching School Is But Another Word For Sure And Not Very Slow Destruction.

Teach A Parrot The Terms 'supply And Demand' And You've Got An Economist.

To Be True Is Manly, Chivalrous, Christian; To Be False Is Mean, Cowardly, Devilish.

My Whinstone House My Castle Is, I Have My Own Four Walls.

It Is Not A Lucky Word, This Name Impossible; No Good Comes Of Those Who Have It So Often In Their Mouths.

Lies Exist Only To Be Extinguished.

So Here Hath Been Dawning Another Blue Day; Think, Wilt Thou Let It Slip Useless Away? Out Of Eternity This New Day Is Born, Into Eternity At Night Will Return.

What Is Nature? Art Thou Not The Living Government Of God? O Heaven, Is It In Very Deed He Then That Ever Speaks Through Thee, That Lives And Loves In Thee, That Lives And Loves In Me?

Happy Season Of Childhood! Kind Nature, That Art To All A Bountiful Mother; That Visitest The Poor Man's Hut With Auroral Radiance; And For Thy Nursling Hast Provided A Soft Swathing Of Love And Infinite Hope Wherein He Waxes And Slumbers, Danced Round By Sweetest Dreams!

Love Not Pleasure; Love God.

The Most Unhappy Of All Men Is The Man Who Cannot Tell What He Is Going To Do, Who Has Got No Work Cut-out For Him In The World, And Does Not Go Into It. For Work Is The Grand Cure Of All The Maladies And Miseries That Ever Beset Mankind,honest Work, Which You Intend Getting Done.

He Is Wise Who Can Instruct Us And Assist Us In The Business Of Virtuous Living.

A Fourth Estate, Of Able Editors, Springs Up.

Talk That Does Not End In Any Kind Of Action Is Better Suppressed Altogether.

I Don't Like To Talk Much With People Who Always Agree With Me. It Is Amusing To Coquette With An Echo For A Little While, But One Soon Tires Of It.

History Is A Great Dust Heap.

Love Not Pleasure; Love God. This Is The Everlasting Yea, Wherein All Contradiction Is Solved.

We Remove Mountains, And Make Seas Our Smooth Highway; Nothing Can Resist Us. We War With Rude Nature; And, By Our Resistless Engines, Come Off Always Victorious, And Loaded With Spoils.

In Private Life I Never Knew Anyone Interfere With Other People's Disputes But He Heartily Repented Of It.

He Who Has No Vision Of Eternity Has No Hold On Time.

A Heavenly Awe Overshadowed And Encompassed, As It Still Ought, And Must, All Earthly Business Whatsoever.

It Is The Heart Always That Sees, Before The Head Can See.

See Deep Enough, And You See Musically.

Music And Healing

No Man Who Has Once Heartily And Wholly Laughed Can Be Altogether Irreclaimably Bad.

The Greatest Event For The World Is The Arrival Of A New And Wise Person.

Variety Is The Condition Of Harmony.

The Greatest Fault Is To Be Conscious Of None.

With Stupidity And Sound Digestion, Man May Front Much.

Of All The Paths A Man Could Strike Into, There Is, At Any Given Moment, A Best Path .. A Thing Which, Here And Now, It Were Of All Things Wisest For Him To Do .. To Find This Path, And Walk In It, Is The One Thing Needful For Him.

Weak Eyes Are Fondest Of Glittering Objects.

All True Work Is Sacred. In All True Work, Were It But True Hand Work, There Is Something Of Divineness. Labor, Wide As The Earth, Has Its Summit In Heaven.

Unity, Agreement, Is Always Silent Or Soft-voiced; It Is Only Discord That Loudly Proclaims Itself.

Blessed Is He Who Has Found His Work; Let Him Ask No Other Blessedness. He Has A Work, A Life-purpose; He Has Found It, And Will Follow It! How, As A Free-flowing Channel, Dug And Torn By Noble Force Through The Sour Mudswamp Of One's Existence, Like An Ever-deepening River There, It Runs And Flows

To The Wisest Man, Wide As Is His Vision. Nature Remains Of Quite Infinite Depth, Of Quite Infinite Expansion And All Experience Thereof Limits Itself To Some Few Computed Centuries And Measured Square Miles.

Speech Is Great, But Silence Is Greater.

Poverty, We May Say, Surrounds A Man With Ready-made Barriers, Which If They Do Mournfully Gall And Hamper, Do At Least Prescribe For Him, And Force On Him, A Sort Of Course And Goal; A Safe And Beaten, Though A Circuitous, Course. A Great Part Of His Guidance Is Secure Against Fatal Error, Is Withdrawn From His Control. The Rich, Again, Has His Whole Life To Guide, Without Goal Or Barrier, Save Of His Own Choosing, And, Tempted, Is Too Likely To Guide It Ill.

Cease To Brag To Me Of America, And Its Model Institutions And Constitutions. America, Too, Will Have To Strain Its Energies, Crack Its Sinews, And All But Break Its Heart, As The Rest Of Us Have Had To Do, In Thousand-fold Wrestle With The Pythons, And Mud-demons, Before It Can Become A Babitation For The Gods.

The Merit Of Originality Is Not Novelty; It Is Sincerity. The Believing Man Is The Original Man; Whatsoever He Believes, He Believes It For Himself, Not For Another.

Tell A Person They Are Brave And You Help Them Become So.

One Life; A Little Gleam Of Time Between Two Eternities; No Second Chance To Us For Evermore!

There Is But One Temple In This Universe: The Body. We Speak To God Whenever We Lay Our Hands Upon It.

In The Poorest Cottage Are Books: Is One Book, Wherein For Several Thousands Of Years The Spirit Of Man Has Found Light, And Nourishment, And An Interpreting Response To Whatever Is Deepest In Him.

He Who Could Foresee Affairs Three Days In Advance Would Be Rich For Thousands Of Years.

Give Us, O Give Us The Man Who Sings At His Work! Be His Occupation What It May, He Is Equal To Any Of Those Who Follow The Same Pursuit In Silent Sullenness. He Will Do More In The Same Time . . . He Will Do It Better . . . He Will Persevere Longer. One Is Scarcely Sensible To Fatigue While He Marches To Music. The Very Stars Are Said To Make Harmony As They Revolve In Their Spheres.

No Amount Of Ability Is Of The Slightest Avail Without Honor.

One Monster There Is In The World, The Idle Man.

If Jesus Christ Were To Come Today, People Would Not Even Crucify Him. They Would Ask Him To Dinner, And Hear What He Had To Say, And Make Fun Of It.

The Soul Gives Unity To What It Looks At With Love.

History Is A Mighty Dramos, Enacted Upon The Theatre Of Times, With Suns For Lamps And Eternity For A Background.

The Past Is All Holy To Us; The Dead Are All Holy; Even They That Were Wicked When Alive.

Men Do Less Than They Ought, Unless They Do All They Can.

Perfect Ignorance Is Quiet, Perfect Knowledge Is Quiet; Not So The Transition From The Former To The Latter.

To Us Also, Through Every Star, Through Every Blade Of Grass, Is Not God Made Visible If We Will Open Our Minds And Our Eyes.

A Fair Day's Wages For A Fair Day's Work.

No Great Man Lives In Vain. The History Of The World Is But The Biography Of Great Men.

Well Might The Ancients Make Silence A God; For It Is The Element Of All Godhood, Infinitude, Or Transcendental Greatness,--at Once The Source And The Ocean Wherein All Such Begins And Ends.

Music Is Well Said To Be The Speech Of Angels.

Nothing Ever Happens But Once In All This World. What I Do Now I Do Once For All. It Is Over And Gone, With All Its Eternity Of Solemn Meaning.

Silence Is The Eternal Duty Of Man.

We Arc The Miracle Of Miracles, The Great Inscrutable Mystery Of God.

Doubt Of Any Kind Cannot Be Resolved Except By Action.

A Man Lives By Believing Something: Not By Debating And Arguing About Many Things.

The Great Silent Man! Looking Round On The Noisy Inanity Of The World,--words With Little Meaning, Actions With Little Worth,--one Loves To Reflect On The Great Empire Of Silence.

Little Other Than A Red Tape Talking-machine, And Unhappy Bag Of Parliamentary Eloquence.

The First Purpose Of Clothes... Was Not Warmth Or Decency, But Ornament.... Among Wild People, We Find Tattooing And Painting Even Prior To Clothes. The First Spiritual Want Of A Barbarous Man Is Decoration; As Indeed We Still See Among The Barbarous Classes In Civilized Countries.

No Conquest Can Ever Become Permanent Which Does Not Show Itself Beneficial To The Conquered As Well As To The Conquerors.

There Is In Man A Higher Than Love Of Happiness; He Can Do Without Happiness, And Instead Thereof Find Blessedness.

Learn To Be Good Readers, Which Is Perhaps A More Difficult Thing Than You Imagine. Learn To Be Discriminative In Your Reading; To Read Faithfully, And With Your Best Attention, All Kinds Of Things Which You Have A Real Interest In,--a Real, Not An Imaginary,--and Which You Find To Be Really Fit For What You Are Engaged In.

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