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The Reverence For The Deeds Of Our Ancestors Is A Treacherous Sentiment. Their Merit Was Not To Reverence The Old, But To Honor The Present Moment; And We Falsely Make Them Excuses Of The Very Habit Which They Hated And Defied.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Reverence For The

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Reverence For The Deeds Of Our Ancestors Is A Treacherous Sentiment. Their Merit Was Not To Reverence The Old, But To Honor The Present Moment; And We Falsely Make Them Excuses Of The Very Habit Which They Hated And Defied.

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A Man Is Like A Bit Of Labrador Spar, Which Has No Lustre As You Turn It In Your Hand Until You Come To A Particular Angle; Then It Shows Deep And Beautiful Colors. There Is No Adaptation Or Universal Applicability In Men, But Each Has His Special Talent, And The Mastery Of Successful Men Consists In Adroitly Keeping Themselves Where And When That Turn Shall Be Oftenest To Be Practiced.

What Is A Man Born For But To Be A Reformer, A Remaker Of What Has Been Made, A Denouncer Of Lies, A Restorer Of Truth And Good?

Go Out Of The House To See The Moon, And 't Is Mere Tinsel; It Will Not Please As When Its Light Shines Upon Your Necessary Journey. The Beauty That Shimmers In The Yellow Afternoons Of October, Who Could Ever Clutch It? Go Forth To Find It, And It Is Gone: 't Is Only A Mirage As You Look From The Windows Of Diligence.

Your Genuine Action Will Explain Itself, And Will Explain Your Other Genuine Actions. Your Conformity Explains Nothing.

History Is Full, Down To This Day, Of The Imbecility Of Kings And Governors. They Are A Class Of Persons Much To Be Pitied, For They Know Not What They Should Do.

I Cannot Find Language Of Sufficient Energy To Convey My Sense Of The Sacredness Of Private Integrity.

Shakespeare Carries Us To Such A Lofty Strain Of Intelligent Activity, As To Suggest A Wealth Which Beggars His Own; And We Then Feel That The Splendid Works Which He Has Created, And Which In Other Hours We Extol As A Sort Of Self-existent Poetry, Take No Stronger Hold Of Real Nature Than The Shadow Of A Passing Traveller On The Rock. The Inspiration Which Uttered Itself In Hamlet And Lear Could Utter Things As Good From Day To Day, For Ever.

Great Men Do Not Content Us. It Is Their Solitude, Not Their Force, That Makes Them Conspicuous.

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.

Cannot We Let [children] Be Themselves, And Enjoy Life In Their Own Way? You Are Trying To Make Another You. One's Enough.

There Is A Property In The Horizon Which No Man Has, But He Whose Eyes Can Integrate All The Parts,--that Is, The Poet.

In A World Of Infinite Choice People Are Struggling To Figure Out What To Do.

Congratulate Yourself If You Have Done Something Strange, Extravagant And Broken The Monotony.

Society Is The Stage On Which Manners Are Shown; Novels Are The Literature. Novels Are The Journal Or Record Of Manners; And The New Importance Of These Books Derives From The Fact, That The Novelist Begins To Penetrate The Surface, And Treat This Part Of Life More Worthily.

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

[w]e Pity Our Fathers For Dying Before Steam And Galvanism, Sulphuric Ether And Ocean Telegraphs, Photograph And Spectrograph Arrived, As Cheated Out Of Their Human Estate.

The Thing Done Avails, And Not What Is Said About It.

There Comes A Period Of The Imagination To Each--a Later Youth--the Power Of Beauty, The Power Of Looks, Of Poetry.

Science Surpasses The Old Miracles Of Mythology.

The Wise Man Always Throws Himself On The Side Of His Assailants. It Is More His Interest Than It Is Theirs To Find His Weak Point.

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.

Preaching Is The Expression Of Moral Sentiments Applied To The Duties Of Life.

All Science Is Transcendental Or Else Passes Away.

The Believing We Do Something When We Do Nothing Is The First Illusion Of Tobacco.

Beware When The Great God Lets Loose A Thinker On This Planet. Then All Things Are At Risk. It Is As When A Conflagration Has Broken Out In A Great City, And No Man Knows What Is Safe, Or Where It Will End.

Give Me Health And A Day, And I Will Make The Pomp Of Emperors Ridiculous.

We Are A Puny And Fickle Folk. Avarice, Hesitation, And Following Are Our Diseases.

What We Love That We Have, But By Desire We Bereave Ourselves Of The Love.

Government Has Come To Be A Trade, And Is Managed Solely On Commercial Principles. A Man Plunges Into Politics To Make His Fortune, And Only Cares That The World Shall Last His Days.

That Which Shows God In Me, Fortifies Me. That Which Shows God Out Of Me, Makes Me A Wart And A Wen.

Positive Atheism

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

It Is Curious That Christianity, Which Is Idealism, Is Sturdily Defended By The Brokers, And Steadily Attacked By The Idealists.

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

He Only Is A Well-made Man Who Has A Good Determination.

I Pray My Companion, If He Wishes For Bread, To Ask Me For Bread, And If He Wishes For Sassafras Or Arsenic, To Ask Me For Them, And Not To Hold Out His Plate, As If I Knew Already.

He Walks Abreast With His Days And Feels No Shame In Not 'studying A Profession', For He Does Not Postpone His Life, But Lives Already. He Has Not One Chance, But A Hundred Chances.

I Think It Is The Best Of Humanity That Goes Out To Walk. In Happy Hours, I Think All Affairs May Be Wisely Postponed For Walking.

A Man Finds Room In The Few Square Inches Of The Face For The Traits Of All His Ancestors; For The Expression Of All His History, And His Wants.

The Life Of Truth Is Cold.

Behind Every Individual Closes Organization; Before Him Opens Liberty,--the Better, The Best. The First And Worse Races Are Dead.the Second And Imperfect Races Are Dying Out, Or Remain For The Maturing Of The Higher. In The Latest Race, In Man, Every Generosity, Every New Perception, The Love And Praise He Extorts From His Fellows, Are Certificates Of Advance Out Of Fate Into Freedom.

Dream Delivers Us To Dream, And There Is No End To Illusion. Life Is Like A Train Of Moods Like A String Of Beads, And, As We Pass Through Them, They Prove To Be Many-colored Lenses Which Paint The World Their Own Hue. . . .

Good As Is Discourse, Silence Is Better And Shames It.

A Right Rule For A Club Would Be,-admit No Man Whose Presence Excludes Any One Topic.

In A Library We Are Surrounded By Many Hundreds Of Dear Friends, But They Are Imprisoned By An Enchanter In These Paper And Leathern Boxes.

The Power Which Resides In Him Is New In Nature, And None But He Knows What That Is Which He Can Do, Nor Does He Know Until He Has Tried.

Who Are The Farmer's Servants? ... Geology And Chemistry, The Quarry Of The Air, The Water Of The Brook, The Lightning Of The Cloud, The Castings Of The Worm, The Plough Of The Frost.

The Measure Of A Master Is His Success In Bringing All Men Around To His Opinion Twenty Years Later.

Congratulations

The Sun Illuminates Only The Eye Of The Man, But Shines Into The Eye And The Heart Of The Child.

The Eye Is The Painter And The Ear The Singer.

The Whole Value Of History, Of Biography, Is To Increase My Self-trust, By Demonstrating What Man Can Be And Do.

The Heroic Cannot Be The Common, Nor The Common The Heroic.

Let A Man Behave In His Own House As A Guest.

My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

Keep The Town For Occasions, But The Habits Should Be Formed In Retirement.

The Private Life Of One Man Shall Be A More Illustrious Monarchy,--more Formidable To Its Enemy, More Sweet And Serene In Its Influence To Its Friend, Than Any Kingdom In History. For A Man, Rightly Viewed, Comprehendeth The Particular Natures Of All Men.

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.

Genius Seems To Consist Merely In Trueness Of Sight, In Using Such Words As Show That The Man Was An Eye-witness, And Not A Repeater Of What Was Told.

Wherever We Go, Whatever We Do, Self Is The Sole Subject We Study And Learn.

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

Science, Nature,-o, I've Yearned To Open Some Page.

Nature Has Her Own Best Mode Of Doing Each Thing, And She Has Somewhere Told It Plainly, If We Will Keep Our Eyes And Ears Open. If Not, She Will Not Be Slow In Undeceiving Us, When We Prefer Our Own Way To Hers.

Where Dwells The Religion? Tell Me First Where Dwells Electricity, Or Motion, Or Thought Or Gesture. They Do Not Dwell Or Stay Atall. Electricity Cannot Be Made Fast, Mortared Up And Ended, Like London Monument, Or The Tower, So That You Shall Know Where To Find It, And Keep It Fixed, As The English Do With Their Things, Forevermore; It Is Passing, Glancing, Gesticular; It Is A Traveller, A Newness, A Surprise, A Secret Which Perplexes Them, And Puts Them Out.

A Sect Or Party Is An Elegant Incognito Devised To Save A Man From The Vexation Of Thinking.

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

Different Faces

Looking At God Instantly Reduces Our Disposition To Dissent From Our Brother.

Be A Little Careful About Your Library. Do You Foresee What You Will Do With It? Very Little To Be Sure. But The Real Question Is What It Will Do With You? You Will Come Here And Get Books That Will Open Your Eyes, And Your Ears, And Your Curiosity, And Turn You Inside Out Or Outside In.

Any Work Looks Wonderful To Me Except The One Which I Can Do.

Alas For The Unhappy Man That Is Called To Stand In The Pulpit, And Not Give The Bread Of Life.

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

We Stand Against Fate, As Children Stand Up Against The Wall In Their Father's House, And Notch Their Height From Year To Year. But When The Boy Grows To A Man, And Is Master Of The House, He Pulls Down That Wall And Builds It New And Bigger.

God Knows That All Sorts Of Gentlemen Knock At The Door; But Whenever Used In Strictness And With Any Emphasis, The Name Will Be Found To Point At Original Energy.

Who Is He That Shall Control Me? Why May Not I Act And Speak And Write And Think With Entire Freedom? What Am I To The Universe, Or, The Unvierse, What Is It To Me? Who Hath Forged The Chains Of Wrong And Right, Of Opinion And Custom? And Must I Wear Them?

It Is Very Odd That Nature Should Be So Unscrupulous. She Is No Saint . . .

If We Suddenly Plant Our Foot, And Say, - I Will Neither Eat Nor Drink Nor Wear Nor Touch Any Food Or Fabric Which I Do Not Know To Be Innocent, Or Deal With Any Person Whose Whole Manner Of Life Is Not Clear And Rational, We Shall Stand Still. Whose Is So? Not Mine; Not Thine; Not His. But I Think We Must Clear Ourselves Each One By The Interrogation, Whether We Have Earned Our Bread To-day By The Hearty Contribution Of Our Energies To The Common Benefit? And We Must Not Cease To Tend To The Correction Of These Flagrant Wrongs, By Laying One Stone Aright Every Day.

When Friendships Are Real, They Are Not Glass Threads Or Frost-work , But The Solidest Thing We Know.

Always Maintain Your Common Sense And Artful Skills, And Funnel It All Into Plain Enough Dealings.

The Book Of Nature Is The Book Of Fate. She Turns The Gigantic Pages, Leaf After Leaf Never Returning One.

Every Opinion Reacts On Him Who Utters It.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It. Many Will Read The Book Before One Thinks Of Quoting A Passage. As Soon As He Has Done This, That Line Will Be Quoted East And West.

Sleep Takes Off The Costume Of Circumstance, Arms Us With Terrible Freedom, So That Every Will Rushes To Deed. A Skillful Man Reads His Dreams For His Self-knowledge; Yet Not The Details, But The Quality. What Part Does He Play In Them - A Cheerful, Manly Part, Or A Poor, Drivelling Part? However Monstrous And Grotesque Their Apparitions, They Have A Substantial Truth.

Perception Is A Mirror Not A Fact. And What I Look On Is My State Of Mind, Reflected Outward.

Those Who Cannot Tell What They Desire Or Expect, Still Sigh And Struggle With Indefinite Thoughts And Vast Wishes.

Consider What You Have In The Smallest Well-chosen Library-a Company Of The Wisest And Wittiest Men Which Can Be Plucked Out Of All Civilized Countries In A Thousand Years. The Men Themselves Were Then Hidden And Inaccessible. They Were Solitary, Impatient Of Interruption, And Fenced By Etiquette. But Now They Are Immortal, And The Thought They Did Not Reveal, Even To Their Bosom Friends, Is Here Written Out In Transparent Words Of Light To Us, Who Are Strangers Of Another Age.

We Are Imprisoned In Life In The Company Of Persons Powerfully Unlike Us.

All Stealing Is Comparative. If You Come To Absolutes, Pray Who Does Not Steal.

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

Every Reform Was Once A Private Opinion.

Guard Your Own Spare Moments. They Are Like Uncut Diamonds.

Health, South Wind, Books, Old Trees, A Boat, A Friend.

We Do Not Yet Trust The Unknown Power Of Thoughts.

Power Of Thought

The Religion Of England Is Part Of Good-breeding. When You See On The Continent The Well-dressed Englishman Come Into His Ambassador's Chapel And Put His Face For Silent Prayer Into His Smooth-brushed Hat, You Cannot Help Feeling How Much National Pride Prays With Him, And The Religion Of A Gentleman.

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

He Only Is A Well-made Man Who Has A Good Determination. And The End Of Culture Is Not To Destroy This, God Forbid! But To Train Away All Impediment And Mixture And Leave Nothing But Pure Power.

Mankind Divides Itself Into Two Classes,--benefactors And Malefactors. The Second Class Is Vast; The First A Handful.

It Is Defeat Which Educates Us.

The Escape From All False Ties; Courage To Be What We Are; And Love Of What Is Simple And Beautiful; Independence, And Cheerful Relation, These Are The Essentials.

A Friend Is A Person Who Goes Around Saying Nice Things About You Behind Your Back.

Cute Friendship

Behind Your Back

All The Elements, Whose Aid Man Calls In, Will Sometimes Become Big Masters.

How Many Attractions For Us Have Our Passing Fellows In The Streets, Both Male And Female, Which Our Ethics Forbid Us To Express, Which Yet Infuse So Much Pleasure Into Life. A Lovely Child, A Handsome Youth, A Beautiful Girl, A Heroic Man, A Maternal Woman, A Venerable Old Man, Charm Us, Though Strangers, And We Cannot Say So, Or Look At Them But For A Moment.

We Judge Others By Their Actions But We Judge Ourselves By Our Intensions.

Action Is The Process Whereby What Is Not Fully Formed Passes Into Expressive Consciousness.

Fear Is A Great Instructor.

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.

I Am Grown By Sympathy A Little Eager And Sentimental, But Leave Me Alone, And I Should Relish Every Hour And What It Brought Me, The Pot-luck Of The Day, As Heartily As The Oldest Gossip In The Bar-room.

We Are Rich Only Through What We Give, And Poor Only Through What We Refuse.

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

Wise Men Are Not Wise At All Times.

We Must Not Inquire Too Curiously Into The Absolute Value Of Literature. Enough That It Amuses And Exercises Us. At Least It Leaves Us Where We Were. It Names Things, But Does Not Add Things.

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

An Orchard, Good Tillage, Good Grounds, Seem A Fixture, Like A Gold Mine, Or A River, To A Citizen; But To A Large Farmer, Not Much More Fixed Than The State Of The Crop.

We Are By Nature Observers, And Thereby Learners. That Is Our Permanent State.

When You Were Born You Were Crying And Everyone Else Was Smiling. Live Your Life So At The End, Your're The One Who Is Smiling And Everyone Else Is Crying.

The Search After The Great Men Is The Dream Of Youth, And The Most Serious Occupation Of Manhood.

The Only Joy In His Being Mine, Is That The Not Mine Is Mine.

We Are The Prisoners Of Ideas.

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.

The Soul Answers Never By Words, But By The Thing Itself That Is Inquired After.

Earth's A Howling Wilderness, Truculent With Fraud And Force.

The Exceptional Life Depends Not On Working Harder, But On Different, Even Opposite, Actions From Habit And The Crowd.

The Religion Which Is To Guide And Fulfill The Present And Coming Ages, Whatever Else It Be, Must Be Intellectual. The Scientific Mind Must Have A Faith Which Is Science.

The Borrower Runs In His Own Debt.

Great Geniuses Have The Shortest Biographies. Their Cousins Can Tell You Nothing About Them. They Lived In Their Writings, And Sotheir House And Street Life Was Trivial And Commonplace. If You Would Know Their Tastes And Complexions, The Most Admiring Of Their Readers Most Resembles Them.

Napoleon Said Of Massena, That He Was Not Himself Until The Battle Began To Go Against Him; Then, When The Dead Began To Fall In Ranks Around Him, Awoke His Powers Of Combination, And He Put On Terror And Victory As A Robe.

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.

You Have Just Dined, And However Scrupulously The Slaughterhouse Is Concealed In The Graceful Distance Of Miles, There Is Complicity.

After You Have Pumped Your Brains For Thoughts And Verses, There Is A Better Poetry Hinted In Whistling A Tune On Your Walk.

Skepticism Is Slow Suicide.

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.

Let Us, If We Must Have Great Actions, Make Our Own So. All Action Is Of Infinite Elasticity, And The Least Admits Of Being Inflated With Celestial Air, Until It Eclipses The Sun And Moon.

And In Cases Where Profound Conviction Has Been Wrought, The Eloquent Man Is He Who Is No Beautiful Speaker, But Who Is Inwardly Drunk With A Certain Belief. It Agitates And Tears Him, And Perhaps Almost Bereaves Him Of The Power Of Articulation.

Romeo, Of Dead, Should Be Cut Up Into Little Stars To Make The Heavens Fine. Life, With This Pair, Has No Other Aim, Asks No More,than Juliet,--than Romeo.

The Height, The Deity Of Man Is To Be Self-sustained, To Need No Gift, No Foreign Force. Society Is Good When It Does Not Violate Me, But Best When It Is Likest To Solitude.

Genius Has Infused Itself Into Nature. It Indicates Itself By A Small Excess Of Good, A Small Balance In Brute Facts Always Favorable To The Side Of Reason.

The Best Political Economy Is The Care And Culture Of Men; For, In These Crises, All Are Ruined Except Such As Are Proper Individuals, Capable Of Thought, And Of New Choice And The Application Of Their Talent To New Labor.

When The Gods Come Among Men, They Are Not Known.

An Imaginative Book Renders Us Much More Service At First, By Stimulating Us Through Its Tropes, Than Afterward, When We Arrive Atthe Precise Sense Of The Author. I Think Nothing Is Of Any Value In Books, Excepting The Transcendental And Extraordinary.

How Can He [today's Writer] Be Honored, When He Does Not Honor Himself; When He Loses Himself In The Crowd; When He Is No Longer The Lawgiver, But The Sycophant, Ducking To The Giddy Opinion Of A Reckless Public.

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

The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zigzag Line Of A Hundred Tacks. See The Line From A Sufficient Distance, And It Straightens Itself To The Average Tendency. Your Genuine Action Will Explain Itself, And Will Explain Your Other Genuine Actions. Your Conformity Explains Nothing. Act Singly, And What You Have Already Done Singly Will Justify You Now. Greatness Appeals To The Future.

Whenever You Are Sincerely Pleased You Are Nourished.

Let Us Not Look East And West For Materials Of Conversation, But Rest In Presence And Unity. A Just Feeling Will Fast Enough Supply Fuel For Discourse, If Speaking Be More Grateful Than Silence. When People Come To See Us, We Foolishly Prattle, Lest We Be Inhospitable. But Things Said For Conversation Are Chalk Eggs. Don't Say Things. What You Are Stands Over You The While, And Thunders So That I Cannot Hear What You Say To The Contrary.

Is Not Marriage An Open Question, When It Is Alleged, From The Beginning Of The World, That Such As Are In The Institution Wish To Get Out, And Such As Are Out Wish To Get In?

The Secret Is The Answer To All That Has Been, All That Is, And All That Will Ever Be.

Law Of Attraction

All The Great Ages Have Been Ages Of Belief.

A Day Is A Miniature Eternity.

The Moral Sense Reappears Today With The Same Morning Newness That Has Been From Of Old The Fountain Of Beauty And Strength. You Say There Is No Religion Now. 'tis Like Saying In Rainy Weather, There Is No Sun, When At That Moment We Are Witnessing One Of Its Superlative Effects.

The Soul Is Not Born; It Does Not Die; It Was Not Produced From Anyone Unborn, Eternal, It Is Not Slain, Though The Body Is Slain.

The Civilized Man Has Built A Coach, But Has Lost The Use Of His Feet.

The Passages Of Shakespeare That We Most Prize Were Never Quoted Until Within This Century.

At Present, Man Applies To Nature But Half His Force. He Works On The World With His Understanding Alone. He Lives In It, And Masters It By A Penny-wisdom; And He That Works Most In It, Is But A Half-man, And Whilst His Arms Are Strong And His Digestion Good, His Mind Is Imbruted, And He Is A Selfish Savage.

Don't Hang A Dismal Picture On The Wall, And Do Not Daub With Sables And Glooms In Your Conversation. Don't Be A Cynic And Disconsolate Preacher. Don't Bewail And Bemoan. Omit The Negative Propositions. Nerve Us With Incessant Affirmatives. Don't Waste Yourself In Rejection, Nor Bark Against The Bad, But Chant The Beauty Of The Good. When That Is Spoken Which Has A Right To Be Spoken, The Chatter And The Criticism Will Stop. Set Down Nothing That Will Not Help Somebody.

Thus Grows Up Fashion, An Equivocal Semblance, The Most Puissant, The Most Fantastic And Frivolous, The Most Feared And Followed, And Which Morals And Violence Assault In Vain.

So In Accepting The Leading Of The Sentiments, It Is Not What We Believe Concerning The Immortality Of The Soul, Or The Like, But The Universal Impulse To Believe, That Is The Material Circumstance, And Is The Principal Fact In This History Of The Globe.

No Man Acquires Property Without Acquiring With It A Little Arithmetic Also.

The Profoundest Thought Or Passion Sleeps As In A Mine, Until An Equal Mind And Heart Finds And Publishes It.

When The Eyes Say One Thing, And The Tongue Another, A Practiced Man Relies On The Language Of The First.

The Foolish Man Wonders At The Unusual, But The Wise Man At The Usual.

The Ancestor Of Every Action Is Thought; When We Understand That We Begin To Comprehend That Our World Is Governed By Thought And That Everything Without Had Its Counterpart Originally Within The Mind.

All Men Are Poets At Heart. They Serve Nature For Bread, But Her Loveliness Overcomes Them Sometimes.

For No Man Can Write Anything Who Does Not Think That What He Writes Is, For The Time, The History Of The World.

Yet Things Are Knowable! They Are Knowable, Because, Being From One, Things Correspond. There Is A Scale: And The Correspondence Of Heaven To Earth, Of Matter To Mind, Of The Part To The Whole, Is Our Guide. As There Is A Science Of Stars, Called Astronomy; And Science Of Quantities, Called Mathematics; A Science Of Qualities, Called Chemistry; So There Is A Science Of Sciences,--i Call It Dialectic,--which Is The Intellect Discriminating The False And The True.

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

The Writer Is An Explorer. Every Step Is An Advance Into A New Land.

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.

Each Man Is A Hero And An Oracle To Somebody.

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.

Do Your Thing, And I Shall Know You.

Doing Well Is The Result Of Doing Good. That's What Capitalism Is All About.

My Own Mind Is The Direct Revelation Which I Have From God And Far Least Liable To Mistake In Telling His Will Of Any Revelation.

A Beautiful Behavior Is Better Than A Beautiful Form; It Gives A Higher Pleasure Than Statues Or Pictures; It Is The Finest Of Fine Arts.

Who Can . . . Guess How Much Industry And Providence And Affection We Have Caught From The Pantomime Of Brutes?

And Striving To Be Man, The Worm Mounts Through All The Spires Of Form.

As Thinkers, Mankind Has Ever Divided Into Two Sects, Materialists And Idealists; The First Class Founding On Experience, The Second On Consciousness; The First Class Beginning To Think From The Data Of The Senses, The Second Class Perceive That The Senses Are Not Final And Say, The Senses Give Us Representations Of Things, But What Are The Things Themselves, They Cannot Tell. The Materialist Insists On Facts, On History, On The Force Of Circumstances And The Animal Wants Of Man; The Idealists On The Power Of Thought And Will, On Inspiration, On Miracle, On Individual Culture.

Have Mountains, And Waves, And Skies, No Significance But What We Consciously Give Them, When We Employ Them As Emblems Of Our Thoughts?

You Shall Not Come Nearer A Man By Getting Into His House.

A Man's Power To Connect His Thought With Its Proper Symbol, And So To Utter It, Depends On The Simplicity Of His Character, That Is, Upon His Love Of Truth, And His Desire To Communicate It Without Loss.

Drive Out Nature With A Fork, She Comes Running Back.

I Am At A Loss To Understand Why People Hold Miss Austen's Novels At So High A Rate, Which Seem To Me Vulgar In Tone, Sterile In Artistic Invention, Imprisoned In Their Wretched Conventions Of English Society, Without Genius, Wit, Or Knowledge Of The World. Never Was Life So Pinched And Narrow. ... All That Interests In Any Character [is This]: Has He (or She) The Money To Marry With? ... Suicide Is More Respectable.

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

The Lord Is The Peasant That Was, The Peasant Is The Lord That Shall Be.

The Resources Of The Scholar Are Proportioned To His Confidence In The Attributes Of The Intellect.

The Soul Of God Is Poured Into The World Through The Thoughts Of Men.

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

No Nation Has Produced Anything Like His Equal. There Is No Quality In The Human Mind, There Is No Class Of Topics, There Is No Region Of Thought, In Which He Has Not Soared Or Descended, And None In Which He Has Not Said The Commanding Word.

He Is A Good Man Who Can Receive A Gift Well.

I Have No Hostility To Nature, But A Child's Love To It. I Expand And Live In The Warm Day Like Corn And Melons.

It Is Handsomer To Remain In The Establishment Better Than The Establishment, And Conduct That In The Best Manner, Than To Make Asally Against Evil By Some Single Improvement, Without Supporting It By A Total Regeneration.

As Arkwright And Whitney Were The Demi-gods Of Cotton, So Prolific Time Will Yet Bring An Inventor To Every Plant. There Is Not A Property In Nature But A Mind Is Born To Seek And Find It.

Converse With A Mind That Is Grandly Simple, And Literature Looks Like Word-catching.

Great Country, Diminutive Minds. America Is Formless, Has No Terrible And No Beautiful Condensation.

Flowers Are The Earth Laughing.

I Believe That Our Own Experience Instructs Us That The Secret Of Education Lies In Respecting The Pupil.

Most Of The Shadows Of This Life Are Caused By Standing In One's Own Sunshine.

The Cure For False Theology Is Motherwit. Forget Your Books And Traditions, And Obey Your Moral Perceptions At This Hour.

A Man Should Not Be A Silkworm; Nor A Nation A Tent Of Caterpillars.

The Health Of The Eye Seems To Demand A Horizon. We Are Never Tired, So Long As We Can See Far Enough.

Our Condition As Men Is Risky And Ticklish Enough. One Can Not Be Sure Of Himself And His Fortune An Hour, But He May Be Whisked Off Into Some Pitiable Or Ridiculous Plight.

No Man Can Quite Emancipate Himself From His Age And Country, Or Produce A Model In Which The Education, The Religion, The Politics, Usages, And Arts, Of His Times Shall Have No Share.

Self Reliance, The Height And Perfection Of Man, Is Reliance On God.

Life Is A Search After Power.

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