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The True Historical Genius, To Our Thinking, Is That Which Can See The Nobler Meaning Of Events That Are Near Him, As The True Poet Is He Who Detects The Divine In The Casual; And We Somewhat Suspect The Depth Of His Insight Into The Past Who Cannot Recognize The Godlike Of To-day Under That Disguise In Which It Always Visits Us.

-James Russell Lowell

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The True Historical Genius,

James Russell Lowell

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The True Historical Genius, To Our Thinking, Is That Which Can See The Nobler Meaning Of Events That Are Near Him, As The True Poet Is He Who Detects The Divine In The Casual; And We Somewhat Suspect The Depth Of His Insight Into The Past Who Cannot Recognize The Godlike Of To-day Under That Disguise In Which It Always Visits Us.

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One Learns More Metaphysics From A Single Temptation Than From All The Philosophers.

The Victory's In Believing.

God Does Not Weigh Criminality In Our Scales. We Have One Absolute, With The Seal Of Authority Upon It; And With Us An Ounce Is An Ounce, And A Pound A Pound. God's Measure Is The Heart Of The Offender,--a Balance Which Varies With Every One Of Us, A Balance So Delicate That A Tear Cast In The Other Side May Make The Weight Of Error Kick The Beam.

It Is Right Precious To Behold The First Long Surf Of Climbing Light Flood All The Thirsty East With Gold.

The Opening Of The First Grammar School Was The Opening Of The First Trench Against Monopoly In Church And State.

Before Man Made Us Citizens, Great Nature Made Us Men.

It Seems To Me That The Bane Of Our Country Is A Profession Of Faith Either With No Basis Of Real Belief, Or With No Proper Examination Of The Grounds On Which The Creed Is Supposed To Rest.

Though Old The Thought And Oft Exprest, Tis His At Last Who Says It Best.

Now The Heart Is So Full That A Drop Overfills It; We Are Happy Now Because God Wills It.

Over Our Manhood Bend The Skies; Against Our Fallen And Traitor Lives The Great Winds Utter Prophecies; With Our Faint Hearts The Mountain Strives, Its Arms Outstretched, The Druid Wood Waits With Its Benedicite And To Our Ages Drowsy Blood Still Shouts The Inspiring Sea.

For There's Nothing We Read Of In Torture's Inventions, Like A Well-meaning Dunce, With The Best Of Intentions.

Not Failure, But Low Aim, Is Crime.

Fanaticism, Or, To Call It By Its Milder Name, Enthusiasm, Is Only Powerful And Active So Long As It Is Aggressive. Establish It Firmly In Power, And It Becomes Conservatism, Whether It Will Or No.

Christ Was The First True Democrat That Ever Breathed, As The Old Dramatist Dekkar Said He Was The First True Gentleman.

I Don't Believe In Principle, But I Do In Interest.

Taste Is The Next Gift To Genius.

Truly There Is A Tide In The Affairs Of Men; But There Is No Gulf-stream Setting Forever In One Direction.

Who Gives Himself With His Alms Feeds Three, Himself, His Hungering Neighbor And Me.

Truth, After All, Wears A Different Face To Everybody, And It Would Be Too Tedious To Wait Till All Were Agreed. She Is Said To Lie At The Bottom Of A Well, For The Very Reason, Perhaps, That Whoever Looks Down In Search Of Her Sees His Own Image At The Bottom, And Is Persuaded Not Only That He Has Seen The Goddess, But That She Is Far Better Looking Than He Had Imagined.

Different Faces

A Father Of The Church Said That Property Was Theft, Many Centuries Before Proudhon Was Born. Bourdaloue Reaffirmed It. Montesquieu Was The Inventor Of National Workshops And Of The Theory That The State Owed Every Man A Living. Nay, Was Not The Church Herself The First Organized Democracy?

In The Ocean Of Baseness, The Deeper We Get, The Easier The Sinking.

One Of The Things Particularly Admirable In The Public Utterances Of President Lincoln Is A Certain Tone Of Familiar Dignity, Which, While It Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Attainment Of Mere Style, Is Also No Doubtful Indication Of Personal Character. There Must Be Something Essentially Noble In An Elective Ruler Who Can Descend To The Level Of Confidential Ease Without Forfeiting Respect, Something Very Manly In One Who Can Break Through The Etiquette Of His Conventional Rank And Trust Himself To The Reason And Intelligence Of Those Who Have Elected Him.

The Traitor To Humanity Is The Traitor Most Accursed; Man Is More Than Constitutions; Better Rot Beneath The Sod, Than Be True To Church And State While We Are Doubly False To God.

And Blessed Are The Horny Hands Of Toil.

If I Were Asked What Book Is Better Than A Cheap Book, I Should Answer That There Is One Book Better Than A Cheap Book, - And That Is A Book Honestly Come By.

The Path Of Nature Is, Indeed, A Narrow One, And It Is Only The Immortals That Seek It, And, When They Find It, Do Not Find Themselves Cramped Therein.

It Is The Privilege Of Genius That Life Never Grows Common Place, As It Does For The Rest Of Us.

Count Me O'er Earth's Chosen Heroes, - They Were Souls That Stood Alone, While The Men They Agonized For Hurled The Contumelious Stone, Stood Serene, And Down The Future Saw The Golden Beam Incline To The Side Of Perfect Justice, Mastered By Their Faith Divine, By One Man's Plain Truth To Manhood And To God's Supreme Design.

With Every Step Of The Recent Traveler Our Inheritance Of The Wonderful Is Diminished. Those Beautiful Pictured Notes Of The Possible Are Redeemed At A Ruinous Discount In The Hard Coin Of The Actual.

Thank God Every Morning When You Get Up That You Have Something To Do That Day, Which Must Be Done, Whether You Like It Or Not.

Violet! Sweet Violet! Thine Eyes Are Full Of Tears; Are They Wet Even Yet With The Thought Of Other Years?

Every Person Born Into This World Their Work Is Born With Them.

Slow Are The Steps Of Freedom, But Her Feet Turn Never Backward.

Books Are The Bees Which Carry The Quickening Pollen From One To Another Mind.

The Nurse Of Full-grown Souls Is Solitude.

The Greatest Homage We Can Pay To Truth, Is To Use It.

Toward No Crimes Have Men Shown Themselves So Cold- Bloodedly Cruel As In Punishing Differences Of Belief.

The Brain Can Be Easy To Buy, But The Heart Never Comes To Market.

Of My Merit On That Pint You Yourself May Jedge: All Is, I Never Drink No Sperit, Nor I Haint Never Signed No Pledge.

It Is Mediocrity Which Makes Laws And Sets Mantraps And Spring-guns In The Realm Of Free Song, Saying Thus Far Shalt Thou Go And No Further.

The Pressure Of Public Opinion Is Like The Pressure Of The Atmosphere; You Can't See It - But All The Same, It Is Sixteen Pounds To The Square Inch.

Faith In God, Faith In Man, Faith In Work: This Is The Short Formula In Which We May Sum Up The Teachings Of The Founders Of New England,--a Creed Ample Enough For This Life And The Next.

The Better Part Of Every Man's Education Is That Which He Gives Himself.

Our Seasons Have No Fixed Returns, Without Our Will They Come And Go; At Noon Our Sudden Summer Burns, Ere Sunset All Is Snow.

And The Choice Goes By Forever 'twixt That Darkness And That Light.

Comparative Criticism Teaches Us That Moral And Aesthetic Defects Are More Nearly Related Than Is Commonly Supposed.

No Man, I Suspect, Ever Lived Long In The Country Without Being Bitten By These Meteorological Ambitions. He Likes To Be Hotter And Colder, To Have Been More Deeply Snowed Up, To Have More Trees And Larger Blown Down Than His Neighbors.

It Is The Vain Endeavor To Make Ourselves What We Are Not That Has Strewn History With So Many Broken Purposes And Lives Left In The Rough.

Keats Longed For Fame, But Longed Above All To Deserve It.

The Ultimate Result Of Protecting Fools From Their Folly Is To Fill The Planet Full Of Fools.

The Sentimentalist Does Not Think Of What He Does So Much As Of What The World Will Think Of What He Does.

The Intellect Has Only One Failing, Which, To Be Sure, Is A Very Considerable One. It Has No Conscience.

It May Be Conjectured That It Is Cheaper In The Long Run To Lift Men Up Than To Hold Them Down, And That The Ballot In Their Hands Is Less Dangerous To Society Than A Sense Of Wrong Is In Their Heads.

Such Power There Is In Clear-eyed Self-restraint.

A Wise Man Travels To Discover Himself.

How Little Inventiveness There Is In Man, Grave Copier Of Copies.

Fashion Being The Art Of Those Who Must Purchase Notice At Some Cheaper Rate Than That Of Being Beautiful, Loves To Do Rash And Extravagant Things. She Must Be Forever New, Or She Becomes Insipid.

Life Is The Jailer, Death The Angel Sent To Draw The Unwilling Bolts And Set Us Free.

Not A Change For The Better In Our Human Housekeeping Has Ever Taken Place That Wise And Good Men Have Not Opposed It-have Not Prophesied That The World Would Wake Up To Find Its Throat Cut In Consequence.

There Is Only One Thing Better Than Tradition And That Is The Original And Eternal Life Out Of Which All Tradition Takes Its Rise.

't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away; 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking.

The Right To Be A Cussed Fool Is Safe From All Devices Human, It's Common (ez A Gin'i Rule) To Every Critter Born Of Woman.

The Traitor To Humanity Is The Traitor Most Accurst.

The Rich Man's Sons Inherits Cares; The Bank May Break, The Factory Burn, A Breath May Burst His Bubble Shares, And Soft, White Hands Could Hardly Earn A Living That Would Serve His Turn.

Never Did Poesy Appear So Full Of Heaven To Me, As When I Saw How It Would Pierce Through Pride And Fear To The Lives Of Coarsest Men.

And But Two Ways Are Offered To Our Will, Toil With Rare Triumph, Ease With Safe Disgrace, The Problem Still For Us And All Of Human Race.

No Sincere Desire Of Doing Good Need Make An Enemy Of A Single Human Being; That Philanthropy Has Surely A Flaw In It Which Cannot Sympathize With The Oppressor Equally As With The Oppressed.

Idleness Induces Caprice.

It Is The Rooted Instinct In Men To Admire What Is Better And More Beautiful Than Themselves.

O Chime Of Sweet Saint Charity, Peal Soon That Easter Morn When Christ For All Shall Risen Be, And In All Hearts New-born! That Pentecost When Utterance Clear To All Men Shall Be Given, When All Shall Say My Brother Here, And Hear My Son In Heaven!

A Nature Wise With Finding In Itself The Types Of All, With Watching From The Dim Verge Of The Time What Things To Be Are Visible In The Gleams Thrown Forward On Them From The Luminous Past, Wise With The History Of Its Own Frail Heart, With Reverence And Sorrow, And With Love, Broad As The World, For Freedom And For Man.

With Every Anguish Of Our Earthly Part The Spirit's Sight Grows Clearer.

All Thoughts That Mold The Age Begin Deep Down Within The Primitive Soul.

They Enslave Their Children's Children Who Make Compromise With Sin.

Again, Now, Now, Again Plashes The Rain In Heavy Gouts, The Crinkled Lightning Seems Ever Brightening... And Loud And Long Again The Thunder Shouts His Battle-song, - One Quivering Flash, One Wildering Crash, Followed By Silence Dead And Dull, As If The Cloud, Let Go, Leapt Bodily Below To Whelm The Earth In One Mad Overthrow, And Then A Total Lull.

From Lower To The Higher Next, Not To The Top, Is Nature's Text; And Embryo Good, To Reach Full Stature, Absorbs The Evil In Its Nature.

These Pearls Of Thought In Persian Gulfs Were Bred, Each Softly Lucent As A Rounded Moon; The Diver Omar Plucked Them From Their Bed, Fitzgerald Strung Them On An English Thread.

Fate Loves Best Such Syllables As Are Sweet And Sonorous On The Tongue.

Not Suffering, But Faint Heart, Is Worst Of Woes.

In The Scale Of The Destinies, Brawn Will Never Weigh So Mach As Brain.

The Discontent With The Existing Order Of Things Pervaded The Atmosphere, Wherever The Conditions Were Favorable, Long Before Columbus, Seeking The Back Door Of Asia, Found Himself Knocking At The Front Door Of America.

Most Long Lives Resemble Those Threads Of Gossamer, The Nearest Approach To Nothing Unmeaningly Prolonged, Scarce Visible Pathways Of Some Worm From His Cradle To His Grave.

And What Is So Rare As A Day In June? Then, If Ever, Come Perfect Days; Then Heaven Tries Earth If It Be In Tune, And Over It Softly Her Warm Ear Lays; Whether We Look, Or Whether We Listen, We Hear Life Murmur, Or See It Glisten.

Large Charity Doth Never Soil, But Only Whitens Soft White Hands.

My Soul Is Not A Palace Of The Past.

Those Who Love Are But One Step From Heaven.

Old Events Have Modern Meanings; Only That Survives Of Past History Which Finds Kindred In All Hearts And Lives.

Now On The Hills I Hear The Thunder Mutter... Nearer And Nearer Rolls The Thunder-clap, - You Can Hear The Quick Heart Of The Tempest Beat.... Look! Look! That Livid Flash! And Instantly Follows The Rattling Thunder, As If Some Cloud-crag, Split Asunder, Fell, Splintering With A Ruinous Crash, On The Earth, Which Crouches In Silence Under; And Now A Solid Gray Wall Of Rain Shuts Off The Landscape, Mile By Mile.

Attention Is The Stuff That Memory Is Made Of, And Memory Is Accumulated Genius.

Sorrow Is The Great Idealizer.

Things Always Seem Fairer When We Look Back At Them, And It Is Out Of That Inaccessible Tower Of The Past That Longing Leans And Beckons.

And I Honor The Man Who Is Willing To Sink Half His Present Repute For The Freedom To Think, And, When He Has Thought, Be His Cause Strong Or Weak, Will Risk T' Other Half For The Freedom To Speak.

All Birds During The Pairing Season Become More Or Less Sentimental, And Murmur Soft Nothings In A Tone Very Unlike The Grinding-organ Repetition And Loudness Of Their Habitual Song. The Crow Is Very Comical As A Lover; And To Hear Him Trying To Soften His Croak To The Proper Saint-preux Standard Has Something The Effect Of A Mississippi Boatman Quoting Tennyson.

There Comes Emerson First, Whose Rich Words, Every One, Are Like Gold Nails In Temples To Hang Trophies On.

There Is No Work Of Genius Which Has Not Been The Delight Of Mankind, No Word Of Genius To Which The Human Heart And Soul Have Not Sooner Or Later Responded.

Good Luck Is The Willing Handmaid Of Upright, Energetic Character, And Conscientious Observance Of Duty.

'tis Sorrow Builds The Shining Ladder Up, Whose Golden Rounds Are Our Calamities, Whereon Our Firm Feet Planting, Nearer God The Spirit Climbs, And Hath Its Eyes Unsealed. True It Is That Death's Face Seems Stern And Cold When He Is Sent To Summon Those We Love; But All God's Angels Come To Us Disguised; Sorrow And Sickness, Poverty And Death, One After Another, Lift Their Frowning Masks, And We Behold The Seraph's Face Beneath, All Radiant With The Glory And The Calm Of Having Looked Upon The Front Of God.

Tyranny Is Always Weakness

Fortune Is The Rod Of The Weak, And The Staff Of The Brave.

Fate Loves The Fearless.

Compromise Makes A Good Umbrella, But A Poor Roof; It Is Temporary Expedient, Often Wise In Party Politics, Almost Sure To Be Unwise In Statesmanship.

Better To Me The Poor Mans Crust, Better The Blessing Of The Poor, Though I Turn Me Empty From His Door; That Is No True Alms Which The Hand Can Hold; He Gives Nothing But Worthless Gold Who Gives From A Sense Of Duty; But He Who Gives A Slender Mite, And Gives To That Which Is Out Of Sight, That Thread Of The All-sustaining Beauty Which Runs Through All And Doth All Unite, - The Hand Cannot Clasp The Whole Of His Alms, The Heart Outstretches Its Eager Palms, For A God Goes With It And Makes It Store To The Soul That Was Starving In Darkness Before.

Earth Gets Its Price For What Earth Gives Us; The Beggar Is Taxed For A Corner To Die In, The Priest Hath His Fee Who Comes And Shrives Us, We Bargain For The Graves We Lie In; Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold... 't Is Heaven Alone That Is Given Away, 't Is Only God May Be Had For The Asking; There Is No Price Set On The Lavish Summer, And June May Be Had By The Poorest Comer.

There Is Nothing So Desperately Monotonous As The Sea, And I No Longer Wonder At The Cruelty Of Pirates.

There Is A Law Of Neutralization Of Forces, Which Hinders Bodies From Sinking Beyond A Certain Depth In The Sea; But In The Ocean Of Baseness, The Deeper We Get, The Easier The Sinking.

Each Day The World Is Born Anew For Him Who Takes It Rightly.

Truth, After All, Wears A Different Face To Everybody, And It Would Be Too Tedious To Wait Till All Were Agreed.

To Have Greatly Dreamed Precludes Low Ends.

I Love Her With A Love As Still As A Broad River's Peaceful Might, Which By High Tower And Lowly Mill, Goes Wandering At Its Own Will, And Yet Does Ever Flow Aright.

The Nunneries Of Silent Nooks, The Murmured Longing Of The Wood.

New Occasions Teach New Duties, Time Makes Ancient Good Uncouth; They Must Upward Still And Onward, Who Would Keep Abreast Of Truth.

Onward And Upward

Children Are God's Apostles, Sent Forth, Day By Day, To Preach Of Love, And Hope, And Peace.

Love Lives On, And Hath A Power To Bless When They Who Loved Are Hidden In The Grave.

Once To Every Man And Nation Comes The Moment To Decide.

Knowing Who You Are

The True Historical Genius, To Our Thinking, Is That Which Can See The Nobler Meaning Of Events That Are Near Him, As The True Poet Is He Who Detects The Divine In The Casual; And We Somewhat Suspect The Depth Of His Insight Into The Past Who Cannot Recognize The Godlike Of To-day Under That Disguise In Which It Always Visits Us.

Beauty Hath No True Glass, Except It Be In The Sweet Privacy Of Loving Eyes.

Tis Easy Now For The Heart To Be True As For Grass To Be Green Or Skies To Be Blue-- 'tis The Natural Way Of Living.

Earth's Biggest Country 's Gut Her Soul, An' Risen Up Earth's Greatest Nation.

A Friendship Counting Nearly Forty Years Is The Finest Kind Of Shade-tree I Know.

If God Made Poets For Anything, It Was To Keep Alive The Traditions Of The Pure, The Holy, And The Beautiful.

You've Gut To Git Up Airly Ef You Want To Take In God.

Greatly Begin. Though Thou Have Time, But For A Line, Be That Sublime. Not Failure, But Low Aim Is Crime.

Sincerity Is Impossible, Unless It Pervade The Whole Being, And The Pretence Of It Saps The Very Foundation Of Character.

Humbleness Is Always Grace; Always Dignity

That Love For One, From Which There Doth Not Spring Wide Love For All, Is But A Worthless Thing.

And The Poorest Twig On The Elm-tree Was Ridged Inch Deep With Pearl.

The Gift Without The Giver Is Rare.

Moral Supremacy Is The Only One That Leaves Monuments, And Not Ruins, Behind It.

Certainly It Is No Shame To A Man That He Should Be As Nice About His Country As His Sweetheart, Yet It Would Not Be Wise To Hold Everyone An Enemy Who Could Not See Her With Our Own Enchanted Eyes.

O Reputation! Dearer Far Than Life.

For Men In Earnest Have No Time To Waste In Patching Fig-leaves For The Naked Truth.

Better One Bite At Forty, Of Truths Bitter Rind, Than The Hot Wine That Gushed From The Vintage Of Twenty.

The Right Of Individual Property Is No Doubt The Very Corner-stone Of Civilization, As Hitherto Understood; But I Am A Little Impatient Of Being Told That Property Is Entitled To Exceptional Consideration Because It Bears All The Burdens Of The State. It Bears Those, Indeed, Which Can Be Most Easily Borne, But Poverty Pays With Its Person The Chief Expenses Of War, Pestilence, And Famine.

The Thing We Long For, That We Are For One Transcendent Moment.

A Word Once Vulgarized Can Never Be Rehabilitated.

Pride And Weakness Are Siamese Twins.

And What They Dare To Dream Of, Date To Do.

Sentiment Is Intellectualized Emotion; Emotion Precipitated, As It Were, In Pretty Crystals By The Fancy.

Safe In The Hallowed Quiets Of The Past.

It Is Singular How Impatient Men Are With Overpraise Of Others, How Patient Of Overpraise Of Themselves; And Yet The One Does Them No Injury, While The Other May Be Their Ruin.

Poetry Is Something To Make Us Wiser And Better, By Continually Revealing Those Types Of Beauty And Truth, Which God Has Set In All Men's Souls.

True Scholarship Consists In Knowing Not What Things Exist, But What They Mean; It Is Not Memory But Judgment.

Piety Is Indifferent Whether She Enters At The Eye Or At The Ear. There Is None Of The Senses At Which She Does Not Knock One Day Or Other. The Puritans Forgot This, And Thrust Beauty Out Of The Meeting-house And Slammed The Door In Her Face.

Did Man E'er Live Saw Priest Or Woman Yet Forgive?

The Heart Forgets Its Sorrow And Ache.

Here Was A Type Of The True Elder Race, And One Of Plutarch's Men Talked With Us Face To Face.

To Educate The Intelligence Is To Expand The Horizon Of Its Wants And Desires.

Ez Fer War, I Call It Murder,- There You Hev It Plain An' Flat; I Don't Want To Go No Furder Than My Testyment Fer That. . . . . . An' You 've Gut To Git Up Airly Ef You Want To Take In God.

An Angel Stood And Met My Gaze, Through The Low Doorway Of My Tent; The Tent Is Struck, The Vision Stays; I Only Know She Came And Went.

A Great Man Is Made Up Of Qualities That Meet Or Make Great Occasions.

The Dandelions And Buttercups Gild All The Lawn: The Drowsy Bee Stumbles Among The Clover Tops, And Summer Sweetens All To Me.

That Pernicious Sentiment, "our Country, Right Or Wrong."

What Men Prize Most Is A Privilege, Even If It Be That Of Chief Mourner At A Funeral.

Death Is Delightful. Death Is Dawn, The Waking From A Weary Night Of Fevers Unto Truth And Light.

Stern Men With Empires In Their Brains.

My Gran'ther's Rule Was Safer 'n 't Is To Crow: Don't Never Prophesy - Onless Ye Know.

True Love Is But A Humble, Low Born Thing, And Hath Its Food Served Up In Earthenware; It Is A Thing To Walk With, Hand In Hand, Through The Every-dayness Of This Workday World.

Puritanism, Believing Itself Quick With The Seed Of Religious Liberty, Laid, Without Knowing It, The Egg Of Democracy.

It Is Not A Great Xerxes Army Of Words, But A Compact Greek Ten Thousand That March Safely Down To Posterity.

He Who Keeps His Faith Only, Cannot Be Discrowned.

Evil Springs Up, And Flowers, And Bears No Seed, And Feeds The Green Earth With Its Swift Decay, Leaving It Richer For The Growth Of Truth.

He Who Is Firmly Seated In Authority Soon Learns To Think Security, And Not Progress, The Highest Lesson In Statecraft.

Worshippers Of Light Ancestral Make The Present Light A Crime.

Nature Fits All Her Children With Something To Do, He Who Would Write And Can't Write, Can Surely Review.

I Tell Ye Wut, My Judgment Is You're Pooty Sure To Fail, Ez Long 'z The Head Keeps Turnin' Back For Counsel To The The Tail.

The First Lesson Of Life Is To Burn Our Own Smoke; That Is, Not To Inflict On Outsiders Our Personal Sorrows And Petty Morbidness, Not To Keep Thinking Of Ourselves As Exceptional Cases.

A Stray Hair, By Its Continued Irritation, May Give More Annoyance Than A Smart Blow.

The Quiet Tenderness Of Chaucer, Where You Almost Seem To Hear The Hot Tears Falling, And The Simple Choking Words Sobbed Out.

Our American Republic Will Endure Only As Long As The Ideas Of The Men Who Founded It Continue Dominant.

Let Us Be Of Good Cheer, However, Remembering That The Misfortunes Hardest To Bear Are Those Which Never Come.

He Gives Us The Very Quintessence Of Perception,-the Clearly Crystalized Precipitation Of All That Is Most Precious In The Ferment Of Impression After The Impertinent And Obtrusive Particulars Have Evaporated From The Memory.

Evil Is A Far More Cunning And Persevering Propagandist Than Good, For It Has No Inward Strength, And Is Driven To Seek Countenance And Sympathy.

[b]ut In Literature, It Should Be Remembered, A Thing Always Becomes His At Last Who Says It Best, And Thus Makes It His Own.

Earth Gets Its Price For What Earth Gives Us.

History Is Clarified Experience.

Once To Every Person And Nation Come The Moment To Decide. In The Conflict Of Truth With Falsehood, For The Good Or Evil Side.

To Be Young Is Surely The Best, If The Most Precarious, Gift Of Life.

I Willingly Confess To So Great A Partiality For Trees As Tempts Me To Respect A Man In Exact Proportion To His Respect For Them.

God'll Send The Bill To You.

The Devil Loves Nothing Better Than The Intolerance Of Reformers.

It Is Curious How Tyrannical The Habit Of Reading Is, And What Shifts We Make To Escape Thinking. There Is No Bore We Dread Being Left Alone With So Much As Our Own Minds.

Reading Chaucer Is Like Brushing Through The Dewy Grass At Sunrise.

The Material Of Thought Re-acts Upon The Thought Itself.

In General Those Who Nothing Have To Say Contrive To Spend The Longest Time In Doing It.

At The Devil's Booth Are All Things Sold. Each Ounce Of Dross Costs Its Ounce Of Gold.

Life Is A Sheet Of Paper White / Whereon Each One Of Us May Write / His Word Or Two, And Then Comes Night.

And What Is So Rare As A Day In June? Then, If Ever, Come Perfect Days.

It Is Curious For One Who Studies The Action And Reaction Of National Literature On Each Other, To See The Humor Of Swift And Sterne And Fielding, After Filtering Through Richter, Reappear In Carlyle With A Tinge Of Germanism That Makes It Novel, Alien, Or Even Displeasing, As The Case May Be, To The English Mind.

Most Men Make The Voyage Of Life As If They Carried Sealed Orders Which They Were Not To Open Till They Were Fairly In Mid-ocean.

Folks Never Understand The Folks They Hate.

Freedom Needs All Her Poets; It Is They Who Give Her Aspirations Wings, And To The Wiser Law Of Music Sway Her Wild Imaginings.

Hush! Still As Death, The Tempest Holds His Breath As From A Sudden Will; The Rain Stops Short, But From The Eaves You See It Drop, And Hear It From The Leaves, All Is So Bodingly Still.

The Holy Supper Is Kept, Indeed, In Whatso We Share With Anothers Need; Not What We Give, But What We Share, For The Gift Without The Giver Is Bare; Who Gives Himself With His Alms Feeds Three, Himself, His Hungering Neighbor, And Me.

That Cause Is Strong Which Has, Not A Multitude, But One Strong Man Behind It.

It Is Beginning To Be Doubtful Whether Parliament And Congress Sit In Westminster And Washington, Or In The Editorial Rooms Of The Leading Journals,--so Thoroughly Is Everything Debated Before The Authorized And Responsible Debaters Get On Their Legs.

That Best Academy, A Mother's Knee.

Incredulity Robs Us Of Many Pleasures, And Gives Us Nothing In Return.

Wealth May Be An Excellent Thing, For It Means Power, And It Means Leisure, It Means Liberty.

A Sneer Is The Weapon Of The Weak. Like Other Devil's Weapons, It Is Always Cunningly Ready To Our Hand, And There Is More Poison In The Handle Than In The Point.

As Life Runs On, The Road Grows Strange With Faces New - And Near The End. The Milestones Into Headstones Change, Neath Every One A Friend.

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