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The Sinew And Heart Of Man Seem To Be Drawn Out, And We Are Become Timorous Desponding Whimperers. We Are Afraid Of Truth, Afraid Of Fortune, Afraid Of Death, And Afraid Of Each Other.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Sinew And Heart

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Sinew And Heart Of Man Seem To Be Drawn Out, And We Are Become Timorous Desponding Whimperers. We Are Afraid Of Truth, Afraid Of Fortune, Afraid Of Death, And Afraid Of Each Other.

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As The Traveler Who Has Lost His Way, Throws His Reins On His Horse's Neck, And Trusts To The Instinct Of The Animal To Find His Road, So Must We Do With The Divine Animal Who Carries Us Through This World

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

Half A Man's Wisdom Goes With His Courage.

The Secret Of Ugliness Consists Not In Irregularity, But In Being Uninteresting.

Funny Relationship

I Learn Immediately From Any Speaker How Much He Has Already Lived, Through The Poverty Or The Splendor Of His Speech. Life Lies Behind Us As The Quarry From Whence We Get Tiles And Copestones For The Masonry Of Today. This Is The Way To Learn Grammar. Colleges And Books Only Copy The Language Which The Field And The Work-yard Made.

Life Is A Boundless Privilege, And When You Pay For Your Ticket, And Get Into The Car, You Have No Guess What Good Company You Shall Find There.

A Man Should Carry Nature In His Head.

As Long As Our People Quote English Standards They Dwarf Their Own Proportions.

I Honor Health As The First Muse.

Truth Is The Property Of No Individual But Is The Treasure Of All Men.

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

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

If A Man Owns Land, The Land Owns Him.

The Compensations Of Calamity Are Made Apparent To The Understanding Also, After Long Intervals Of Time.

Pride Can Go Without Domestics, Without Fine Clothes, Can Live In A House With Two Rooms, Can Eat Potato, Purslain, Beans, Lyed Corn, Can Work On The Soil, Can Travel Afoot, Can Talk With Poor Men, Or Sit Silent Well Contented With Fine Saloons. But Vanity Costs Money, Labor, Horses, Men, Women, Health And Peace, And Is Still Nothing At Last; A Long Way Leading Nowhere.--only One Drawback; Proud People Are Intolerably Selfish, And The Vain Are Gentle And Giving.

The Only Compensation Which War Offers For Its Manifold Mischiefs, Is In The Great Personal Qualities To Which It Gives Scope And Occasion.

Personal Qualities

One Lesson We Learn Early, That In Spite Of Seeming Difference, Men Are All Of One Pattern. We Readily Assume This With Our Mates, And Are Disappointed And Angry If We Find That We Are Premature, And That Their Watches Are Slower Than Ours. In Fact, The Only Sin Which We Never Forgive In Each Other Is Difference Of Opinion.

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.

God Is Unity, But Always Works In Variety.

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

Truth Is Too Simple For Us: We Do Not Like Those Who Unmask Our Illusions.

Beauty Without Expression Is Boring.

I Grieve That Grief Can Teach Me Nothing, Nor Carry Me One Step Into Real Nature.

In Youth, We Clothe Ourselves With Rainbows, With Hope & Love, & Go As Brave As The Zodiack. In Age We Put Out Another Sort Of Perspiration; Gout, Fever, Rheumatism, Caprice, Doubt, Fretting, And Avarice.

The Reverence For The Scriptures Is An Element Of Civilization, For Thus Has The History Of The World Been Preserved, And Is Preserved.

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

Science Corrects The Old Creeds, Sweeps Away, With Every New Perception, Our Infantile Catechisms, And Necessitates A Faith Commensurate With The Grander Orbits And Universal Laws Which It Discloses Yet It Does Not Surprise The Moral Sentiment That Was Older And Awaited Expectant These Larger Insights.

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.

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

Sunshine Cannot Bleach The Snow, Nor Time Unmake What Poets Know

To Get Up Each Morning With The Resolve To Be Happy Is To Set Your Own Conditions To The Events Of Each Day. To Do This Is To Condition Circumstances Instead Of Being Conditioned By Them.

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.

The Life Of Labor Does Not Make Men, But Drudges.

Make Yourself Necessary To Somebody.

Self Improvement

Friendship Love

Chiefly The Sea-shore Has Been The Point Of Departure To Knowledge, As To Commerce. The Most Advanced Nations Are Always Those Who Navigate The Most.

Our Life Is Not So Much Threatened As Our Perception. Ghostlike We Glide Through Nature, And Should Not Know Our Place Again.

Concentration Is The Secret Of Strength In Politics, In War, In Trade, In Short In All Management Of Human Affairs.

Focus And Concentration

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

A Man Cannot Free Himself By Any Self-denying Ordinances, Neither By Water Nor Potatoes, Nor By Violent Possibilities, By Refusing To Swear, Refusing To Pay Taxes, By Going To Jail, Or By Taking Another Man's Crops Or Squatting On His Land. By None Of These Ways Can He Free Himself; No, Nor By Paying His Debts With Money; Only By Obedience To His Own Genius.

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

In Excited Conversation We Have Glimpses Of The Universe, Hints Of Power Native To The Soul, Far-darting Lights And Shadows Of An Andes Landscape, Such As We Can Hardly Attain In Lone Meditation. Here Are Oracles Sometimes Profusely Given, To Which The Memory Goes Back In Barren Hours.

The Torments Of Martyrdom Are Probably Most Keenly Felt By The Bystanders.

Every Actual State Is Corrupt. Good Men Must Not Obey The Laws Too Well.

Perpetual Modernism Is The Measure Of Merit In Every Work Of Art.

What Opium Is Instilled Into All Disaster? It Shows Formidable As We Approach It, But There Is At Last No Rough Rasping Friction,but The Most Slippery Sliding Surfaces. We Fall Soft On A Thought.

Fear God, And Where You Go Men Shall Think They Walk In Hallowed Cathedrals.

The Universal Does Not Attract Us Until Housed In An Individual.

Don't Be Pushed By Your Problems. Be Led By Your Dreams.

True Friends Are Two People Who Are Comfortable Sharing Silence Together.

Profound Sincerity Is The Only Basis Of Talent As Of Character.

If The Whole Of History Is In One Man, It Is All To Be Explained From Individual Experience.

Every Man Is As Lazy As He Dares To Be.

The Bhagavad-gita Is An Empire Of Thought And In Its Philosophical Teachings Krishna Has All The Attributes Of The Full-fledged Montheistic Deity And At The Same Time The Attributes Of The Upanisadic Absolute.

But There Are Higher Secrets Of Culture, Which Are Not For The Apprentices, But For Proficients. These Are Lessons Only For The Brave. We Must Know Our Friends Under Ugly Masks. The Calamities Are Our Friends.

We Love It Because It Is Self Dependent, Self Derived, And Therefore Of An Old Immaculate Pedigree, Even If Shown In A Young Person.

Knowledge Is The Antidote To Fear. [especially As Fear Often Stands For False Evidence Appearing Real!]

Nothing Is At Last Sacred But The Integrity Of Your Own Mind. Absolve You To Yourself, And You Shall Have The Suffrage Of The World.

The Highest Proof Of Civility Is That The Whole Public Action Of The State Is Directed On Securing The Greatest Good Of The Greatest Number.

Our Debt To Tradition Through Reading And Conversation Is So Massive, Our Protest So Rare And Insignificant-and This Commonly On The Ground Of Other Reading And Hearing-that In Large Sense, One Would Say There Is No Pure Originality. All Minds Quote. Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands. By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. It Is As Difficult To Appropriate The Thoughts Of Others As It Is To Invent.

Bare Lists Of Words Are Found Suggestive To An Imaginative And Excited Mind.

Test Of The Poet Is Knowledge Of Love, For Eros Is Older Than Saturn Or Jove; Never Was Poet, Of Late Or Of Yore, Who Was Not Tremulous With Love-lore.

The Course Of Everything Goes To Teach Us Faith.

Sunday Is The Core Of Our Civilization, Dedicated To Thought And Reverence.

It Is In Rugged Crises, In Unbearable Endurance, And In Aims Which Put Sympathy Out Of The Question, That The Angel Is Shown.

There Are Many Virtues In Books, But The Essential Value Is The Adding Of Knowledge To Our Stock By The Record Of New Facts, And, Better, By The Record Of Intuitions Which Distribute Facts, And Are The Formulas Which Supersede All Histories.

Extremes Meet, And There Is No Better Example Than The Naughtiness Of Humility.

With Thought, With The Ideal, Is Immortal Hilarity, The Rose Of Joy. Round It All The Muses Sing.

That For Which Paul Lived And Died So Gloriously; That For Which Jesus Gave Himself To Be Crucified; The End That Animated The Thousand Martyrs And Heroes Who Have Followed His Steps, Was To Redeem Us From A Formal Religion, And Teach Us To Seek Our Well-being In The Formation Of The Soul.

Every Man Is Eloquent Once In His Life.

Public Speaking

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

Every Man's Condition Is A Solution In Hieroglyph To Those Inquiries He Would Put. He Acts It As Life Before He Apprehends It As Truth.

Every Man Who Would Do Anything Well, Must Come To It From A Higher Ground.

Time Dissipates To Shining Ether The Solid Angularity Of Facts.

Delicious Is A Just And Firm Encounter Of Two In A Thought, In A Feeling.

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.

The April Winds Are Magical, And Thrill Our Tuneful Frames; The Garden-walks Are Passional To Bachelors And Dames.

I Like The Silent Church Before The Service Begins, Better Than Any Preaching.

We Over-estimate The Conscience Of Our Friend. His Goodness Seems Better Than Our Goodness, His Nature Finer, His Temptations Less. Everything That Is His,--his Name, His Form, His Dress, Books, And Instruments,--fancy Enhances. Our Own Thought Sounds New And Larger From His Mouth.

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

You Cannot See The Mountain Near.

Where The Heart Is, There The Muses, There The Gods Sojourn, And Not In Any Geography Of Fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, And Boston Bay, You Think Paltry Places, And The Ear Loves Names Of Foreign And Classic Topography. But Here We Are; And, If We Tarry A Little, We May Come To Learn That Here Is Best. See To It, Only, That Thyself Is Here;--and Art And Nature, Hope And Fate, Friends, Angels, And The Supreme Being, Shall Not Absent From The Chamber Where Thou Sittest.

God Said, I Am Tired Of Kings, I Suffer Them No More; Up To My Ear This Morning Brings The Outrage Of The Poor.

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

Europe Extends To The Alleghenies; America Lies Beyond.

The Eye Is Easily Frightened.

We Expect A Great Man To Be A Good Reader.

In Spite Of Warnings, Change Rarely Occurs Until The Status Quo Becomes More Painful Than Change. People Seem Not To See That Their Opinion Of The World Is Also A Confession Of Their Character.

Every Heroic Act Measures Itself By Its Contempt Of Some External Good. But It Finds Its Own Success At Last, And Then The Prudent Also Extol.

We Can Only Be Valued As We Make Ourselves Valuable.

The Vanishing, Volatile Froth Of The Present Which Any Shadow Will Alter, Any Thought Blow Away, Any Event Annihilate, Is Every Moment Converted Into The Adamantine.

Nature Is Good, But Intellect Is Better, As The Law-giver Is Before The Law-receiver.

There Is A Third Silent Party To All Our Bargains. The Nature And Soul Of Things Takes On Itself The Guaranty Of The Fulfillment Of Every Contract, So That Honest Service Cannot Come To Loss. If You Serve An Ungrateful Master, Serve Him The More. Put God In Your Debt. Every Stroke Shall Be Repaid. The Longer The Payment Is Withholden, The Better For You; For Compound Interest On Compound Interest Is The Rate And Usage Of This Exchequer.

Cities Force Growth And Make People Talkative And Entertaining, But They Also Make Them Artificial.

Speak As You Think, Be What You Are, Pay Your Debts Of All Kinds. I Prefer To Be Owned As Sound And Solvent, And My Word As Good As My Bond, And To Be What Cannot Be Skipped, Or Dissipated, Or Undermined, To All The Eclat In The Universe. This Reality Is The Foundation Of Friendship, Religion, Poetry, And Art.

The Powers Of The Soul Are Commensurate With Its Needs.

My Life Is Superficial, Takes No Root In The Deep World; I Ask, When Shall I Die, And Be Relieved Of The Responsibility Of Seeinga Universe Which I Do Not Use? I Wish To Exchange This Flash-of-lightning Faith For Continuous Daylight, This Fever-glow For A Benign Climate.

The Terrible Tabulation Of The French Statists Brings Every Piece Of Whim And Humor To Be Reducible Also To Exact Numerical Ratios. If One Man In Twenty Thousand, Or In Thirty Thousand, Eats Shoes, Or Marries His Grandmother, Then, In Every Twenty Thousand, Or Thirty Thousand, Is Found One Man Who Eats Shoes, Or Marries His Grandmother.

The Exercise Of All The Senses Is As Intense Pleasure, As Anyone Will Find, Who Recovers The Use Of One After Being Deprived Of It.

It Is Bad Enough That Our Geniuses Cannot Do Anything Useful, But It Is Worse That No Man Is Fit For Society Who Has Fine Traits.he Is Admired At A Distance, But He Cannot Come Near Without Appearing A Cripple.

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

Art Is A Jealous Mistress; And If A Man Have A Genius For Painting, Poetry, Music, Architecture Or Philosophy, He Makes A Bad Husband And An Ill Provider.

Nature Is A Rag-merchant, Who Works Up Every Shred And Ort And End Into New Creations; Like A Good Chemist, Whom I Found, The Other Day, In His Laboratory, Converting His Old Shirts Into Pure White Sugar.

All The Thoughts Of A Turtle Are Turtle

There Is Nothing Settled In Manners, But The Laws Of Behavior Yield To The Energy Of The Individual.

I Have Heard That Stiff People Lose Something Of Their Awkwardness Under High Ceilings, And In Spacious Halls. I Think, Sculptureand Painting Have An Effect To Teach Us Manners, And Abolish Hurry.

If The Black Man Is Feeble And Not Important To The Existing Races, Not On A Parity With The Best Race, The Black Man Must Serve,and Be Exterminated. But If The Black Man Carries In His Bosom An Indispensable Element Of A New And Coming Civilization; For The Sake Of That Element, No Wrong Nor Strength Nor Circumstance Can Hurt Him: He Will Survive And Play His Part. So Now, The Arrival In The World Of Such Men As Toussaint, And The Haytian Heroes, Or Of The Leaders Of Their Race In Barbadoes And Jamaica, Outweighs In Good Omen All The English And American Humanity.

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.

We Know More From Nature Than We Can At Will Communicate.

Language Is A City, To The Building Of Which Every Human Being Brought A Stone; Yet He Is No More To Be Credited With The Grand Result Than The Acaleph Which Adds A Cell To The Coral Reef Which Is The Basis Of The Continent.

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

Law Of Attraction

It Is Commonly Observed That A Sudden Wealth, Like A Prize Drawn In A Lottery Or A Large Bequest To A Poor Family, Does Not Permanently Enrich. They Have Served No Apprenticeship To Wealth, And With The Rapid Wealth Come Rapid Claims Which They Do Not Know How To Deny, And The Treasure Is Quickly Dissipated.

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?

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

Tragedy Is In The Eye Of The Observer, And Not In The Heart Of The Sufferer.

Let A Man Learn To Look For The Permanent In The Mutable And Fleeting; Let Him Learn To Bear The Disappearance Of Things He Was Wont To Reverence; Without Losing His Reverence; Let Him Learn That He Is Here, Not To Work, But To Be Worked Upon; And That, Though Abyss Open Under Abyss, And Opinion Displace Opinion, All Are At Last Contained In The Eternal Cause.

There Is Guidance For Each Of Us, And By Lowly Listening We Shall Hear The Right Word.

Our Fear Of Death Is Like Our Fear That Summer Will Be Short, But When We Have Had Our Swing Of Pleasure, Our Fill Of Fruit, And Our Swelter Of Heat, We Say We Have Had Our Day.

Fractures Well Cured Make Us More Strong.

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

Want Is A Growing Giant Whom The Coat Of Have Was Never Large Enough To Cover.

Before A Leaf-bud Has Burst, Its Whole Life Acts; In The Full-blown Flower There Is No More; In The Leafless Root There Is No Less.

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.

A Man Must Thank His Defects, And Stand In Some Terror Of His Talents.

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

The Universal Soul Is The Alone Creator Of The Useful And The Beautiful; Therefore To Make Anything Useful Or Beautiful, The Individual Must Be Submitted To The Universal Mind.

Look Out Into The July Night, And See The Broad Belt Of Silver Flame Which Flashes Up The Half Of Heaven, Fresh And Delicate As The Bonfires Of The Meadow-flies. Yet The Powers Of Numbers Cannot Compute Its Enormous Age,—lasting As Space And Time,—embosomed In Time And Space.

One Can Never Truly Savor Success Until First Tasting Adversity.

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

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.

Motion Or Change, And Identity Or Rest, Are The First And Second Secrets Of Nature: Motion And Rest. The Whole Code Of Her Laws May Be Written On The Thumbnail, Or The Signet Of A Ring.

In Failing Circumstances No One Can Be Relied On To Keep Their Integrity.

The Essence Of Friendship Is Entireness, A Total Magnanimity And Trust.

Why Should The Way I Feel Depend On The Thoughts In Someone Else's Head?

The Desire Of Gold Is Not For Gold. It Is Not The Love Of Much Wheat, And Wool And Household Stuff. It Is The Means Of Freedom And Benefit.

Build A Better Mousetrap And The World Will Beat A Path To Your Door.

Do What You Fear And Your Fear Will Die.

Every Man Believes He Has A Greater Possibility.

Away With This Hurrah Of Masses, And Let Us Have The Considerate Vote Of Single Men.

We Live In A New And Exceptional Age. America Is Another Word For Opportunity. Our Whole History Appears Like A Last Effort Of The Divine Providence In Behalf Of The Human Race; And A Literal, Slavish Following Of Precedents, As By A Justice Of The Peace, Is Not For Those Who At This Hour Lead The American Civilization.

The Frost Which Kills The Harvest Of A Year Saves The Harvest Of A Century, By Destroying The Weevil Or The Locust.

The Reward Of A Thing Well Done, Is To Have Done It.

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.

The Heroic Soul Does Not Sell Its Justice And Its Nobleness.

Another Success Is The Post-office, With Its Educating Energy Augmented By Cheapness And Guarded By A Certain Religious Sentimentin Mankind; So That The Power Of A Wafer Or A Drop Of Wax Or Gluten To Guard A Letter, As It Flies Over Sea Over Land And Comes To Its Address As If A Battalion Of Artillery Brought It, I Look Upon As A Fine Meter Of Civilization.

All My Best Thoughts Were Stolen By The Ancients.

If You Would Not Be Known To Do Anything, Never Do It.

Sleep Is Not, Death Is Not; Who Seem To Die Live. House You Were Born In, Friends Of Your Spring-time, Old Man And Young Maid, Day's Toil And It's Guerdon, They Are All Vanishing, Fleeing To Fables, Cannot Be Moored

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.

Make The Most Of Yourself, For That Is All There Is Of You.

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

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.

Nothing External To You Has Any Power Over You.

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.

Nature Will Not Be Buddhist: She Resents Generalizing, And Insults The Philosopher In Every Moment With A Million Fresh Particulars.

God Evidently Does Not Intend Us All To Be Rich, Or Powerful Or Great, But He Does Intend Us All To Be Friends.

When Duty Whispers Low, Thou Must, The Youth Replies, I Can.

Each Of Us Sees In Others What We Carry In Our Own Hearts.

Power Obeys Reality, And Not Appearances; Power Is According To Quality, And Not Quantity.

By His Machines Man Can Dive And Remain Under Water Like A Shark; Can Fly Like A Hawk In The Air; Can See Atoms Like A Gnat; Can See The System Of The Universe Of Uriel, The Angel Of The Sun; Can Carry Whatever Loads A Ton Of Coal Can Lift; Can Knock Down Cities With His Fist Of Gunpowder; Can Recover The History Of His Race By The Medals Which The Deluge, And Every Creature, Civil Or Savage Or Brute, Has Involuntarily Dropped Of Its Existence; And Divine The Future Possibility Of The Planet And Its Inhabitants By His Perception Of Laws Of Nature.

In The Fiji Islands, It Appears, Cannibalism Is Now Familiar. They Eat Thier Own Wives And Children. We Only Devour Widows' Houses, And Great Merchants Outwit And Absorb The Substance Of Small Ones, And Every Man Feeds On His Neighbor's Labor If He Can. It Is A Milder Form Of Cannibalism.

Accept Your Genius And Say What You Think.

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

Mathematical Equations

Friends Are Like Spaghetti, They Should Stick Together. The Only Way To Have A Friend Is To Be One.

Astronomy To The Selfish Becomes Astrology.

Anatomy And Physiology

Genius Is Always Sufficiently The Enemy Of Genius By Over Influence. The Literature Of Every Nation Bear Me Witness. The English Dramatic Poets Have Shakspearized Now For Two Hundred Years.

Make Youself Necessary To Someone.

God Made Yeast, As Well As Dough, And Loves Fermentation Just As Dearly As He Loves Vegetation.

If I Have Renounced The Search Of Truth, If I Have Come Into The Port Of Some Pretending Dogmatism, Some New Church, Some Schelling Or Cousin, I Have Died To All Use Of These New Events That Are Born Out Of Prolific Time Into Multitude Of Life Every Hour. I Am As Bankrupt To Whom Brilliant Opportunities Offer In Vain. He Has Just Foreclosed His Freedom, Tied His Hands, Locked Himself Up And Given The Key To Another To Keep.

For All Symbols Are Fluxional; All Language Is Vehicular And Transitive, And Is Good, As Ferries And Horses Are, For Conveyance, Not As Farms And Houses Are, For Homestead.

All The Mistakes I Make Arise From Forsaking My Own Station And Trying To See The Object From Another Person's Point Of View.

Men Succeed When They Realize That Their Failures Are The Preparation For Their Victories.

God Had Infinite Time To Give Us.... He Cut It Up Into A Near Succession Of New Mornings, And, With Each, Therefore, A New Idea, New Inventions, And New Applications.

The World Is The Ring Of His Spells, And The Play Of His Miracles.

As We Refine, Our Checks Become Finer. If We Rise To Spiritual Culture, The Antagonism Takes A Spiritual Form.

A Man Should Not Go Where He Cannot Carry His Whole Sphere Or Society With Him,mnot Bodily, The Whole Circle Of His Friends, But Atmospherically. He Should Preserve In A New Company The Same Attitude Of Mind And Reality Of Relation, Which His Daily Associates Draw Him To, Else He Is Shorn Of His Best Beams, And Will Be An Orphan In The Merriest Club.

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.

For, Though The Origin Of Most Of Our Words Is Forgotten, Each Word Was At First A Stroke Of Genius, And Obtained Currency, Because For The Moment It Symbolized The World To The First Speaker And To The Hearer. The Etymologist Finds The Deadest Word To Have Been Once A Brilliant Picture.

The First Wealth Is Health.

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.

The Unstable Estimates Of Men Crowd To Him Whose Mind Is Filled With A Truth, As The Heaped Waves Of The Atlantic Follow The Moon.

When A Resolute Young Fellow Steps Up To The Great Bully, The World, And Takes Him Boldly By The Beard, He Is Often Surprised To Find It Comes Off In His Hand, And That It Was Only Tied On To Scare Away The Timid Adventurers.

The Charm Of The Best Courages Is That They Are Inventions, Inspirations, Flashes Of Genius.

Reality Is A Sliding Door.

America Is Another Name For Opportunity.

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

Any Relation To The Land, The Habit Of Tilling It, Or Mining It, Or Even Hunting On It, Generates The Feeling Of Patriotism. He Who Keeps Shop On It, Or He Who Merely Uses It As A Support To His Desk And Ledger, Or To His Manufactory, Values It Less.

Genius Is Saying What Is In Your Heart, Because It's In Everyone's Heart.

The City Is Recruited From The Country.

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.

No Change Of Circumstances Can Repair A Defect Of Character.

It Is God In You That Responds To God Without, Or Affirms His Own Words Trembling On The Lips Of Another.

Take Egotism Out And You Would Castrate The Benefactors.

Happy Is The House That Shelters A Friend.

I Remember An Answer Which When Quite Young I Was Prompted To Make A Valued Adviser Who Was Wont To Importune Me With The Dear Old Doctrines Of The Church. On My Saying, What Have I To Do With The Sacredness Of Traditions, If I Live Wholly From Within? My Friend Suggested, - "but These Impulses May Be From Below, Not From Above." I Replied, 'they Do Not Seem To Me To Be Such; But If I Am The Devil's Child, I Will Live Then From The Devil.'

Plants Are The Young Of The World, Vessels Of Health And Vigor; But They Grope Ever Upward Towards Consciousness; The Trees Are Imperfect Men, And Seem To Bemoan Their Imprisonment, Rooted In The Ground.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It.

All Science Is Transcendental Or Else Passes Away.

Sanity Consists In Not Being Subdued By Your Means. Fancy Prices Are Paid For Position, And For The Culture Of Talent, But To Thegrand Interests, Superficial Success Is Of No Account.

Wealth And Poverty Are Seen For What They Are. It Begins To Be Seen That The Poor Are Only They Who Feel Poor, And Poverty Consists In Feeling Poor. The Rich, As We Reckon Them, And Among Them The Very Rich, In A True Scale Would Be Found Very Indigent And Ragged.

A Man Builds A Fine House; And Now He Has A Master, And A Task For Life.

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Louis Armstrong

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