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The Two Parties Which Divide The State, The Party Of Conservation And That Of Innovation, Are Very Old, And Have Disputed The Possession Of The World Ever Since It Was Made.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Two Parties Which

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Two Parties Which Divide The State, The Party Of Conservation And That Of Innovation, Are Very Old, And Have Disputed The Possession Of The World Ever Since It Was Made.

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Every Natural Power Exhilarates; A True Talent Delights The Possessor First.

Foolish, Whenever You Take The Meanness And Formality Of That Thing You Do, Instead Of Converting It Into The Obedient Spiracle Ofyour Character And Aims.

Life Is A Search After Power; And This Is An Element With Which The World Is So Saturated,-there Is No Chink Or Crevice In Which It Is Not Lodged,-that No Honest Seeking Goes Unrewarded.

The Education Of The Will Is The Object Of Our Existence.

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

A Garden Is Like Those Pernicious Machineries Which Catch A Man's Coat-skirt Or His Hand, And Draw In His Arm, His Leg , And His Whole Body To Irresistible Destruction.

The Nonconformist And The Rebel Say All Manner Of Unanswerable Things Against The Existing Republic, But Discover To Our Sense No Plan Of House Or State Of Their Own.

The Miracles Of Genius Always Rest On Profound Convictions Which Refuse To Be Analyzed.

To The Attentive Eye, Each Moment Of The Year Has Its Own Beauty, And In The Same Fields, It Beholds, Every Hour, A Picture Which Was Never Seen Before, And Which Shall Never Be Seen Again.

Go Into One Of Our Cool Churches, And Begin To Count The Words That Might Be Spared, And In Most Places The Entire Sermon Will Go.

The Tendencies Of The Times Favor The Idea Of Self-government, And Leave The Individual, For All Code, To The Rewards And Penalties Of His Own Constitution, Which Work With More Energy Than We Believe, Whilst We Depend On Artificial Restraints.

The Task Ahead Of Us Is Never As Great As The Power Behind Us.

America Is Not Civil, Whilst Africa Is Barbarous.

Skepticism Is Unbelief In Cause And Effect.

Cause And Effect

Every Man Is Actually Weak, And Apparently Strong. To Himself, He Seems Weak; To Others, Formidable.

Do You Love Me? Means At Last Do You See The Same Truth I See? If You Do, We Are Happy Together; But When Presently One Of Us Passes Into The Perception Of A New Truth, We Are Divorced And The Force Of All Nature Cannot Hold Us To Each Other.

There Is No Architect Can Build As The Muse Can; She Is Skilful To Select Materials For Her Plan.

All The Great Speakers Were Bad Speakers At First.

Life Is Very Narrow. Bring Any Club Or Company Of Intelligent Men Together Again After Ten Years, And If The Presence Of Some Penetrating And Calming Genius Could Dispose Them To Frankness, What A Confession Of Insanities Would Come Up!

The Stupidity Of Men Always Invites The Insolence Of Power.

In My Utter Impotence To Test The Authenticity Of The Report Of My Senses, To Know Whether The Impressions They Make On Me Correspond With Outlying Objects, What Difference Does It Make, Whether Orion Is Up There In Heaven, Or Some God Paints The Image In The Firmament Of The Soul?

Men Are So Charmed With Valor That They Have Pleased Themselves With Being Called Lions, Leopards, Eagles And Dragons, From The Animals Contemporary With Us In The Geologic Formations.

Slavery Is An Institution For Converting Men Into Monkeys.

Two May Talk And One May Hear, But Three Cannot Take Part In A Conversation Of The Most Sincere And Searching Sort.

There Is Really No Insurmountable Barrier Save Your Own Inherent Weakness Of Purpose.

Time Is Indeed The Theater And Seat Of Illusions; Nothing Is So Ductile And Elastic. The Mind Stretches An Hour To A Century, And Dwarfs An Age To An Hour.

All Mankind Love A Lover.

To Be A Man Is To Be A Nonconformist.

For Splendor, There Must Somewhere Be Rigid Economy. That The Head Of The House May Go Brave, The Members Must Be Plainly Clad, And The Town Must Save That The State May Spend.

I Believe In Eternity. I Can Find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, And The Islands, - The Genius And Creative Principle Of Each And Of All Eras, In My Own Mind.

We Shun The Rugged Battle Of Fate Where Strength Is Born.

One Idea Lights A Thousand Candles.

Every Stoic Was A Stoic; But In Christendom Where Is The Christian?

Who Shall Forbid A Wise Skepticism, Seeing That There Is No Practical Question On Which Anything More Than An Approximate Solution Can Be Had?

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.

When Fear Enters The Heart Of A Man At Hearing The Names Of Candidates And The Reading Of Laws That Are Proposed, Then Is The State Safe, But When These Things Are Heard Without Regard, As Above Or Below Us, Then Is The Commonwealth Sick Or Dead.

For Poetry Was All Written Before Time Was, And Whenever We Are So Finely Organized That We Can Penetrate Into That Region Where The Air Is Music, We Hear Those Primal Warblings, And Attempt To Write Them Down, But We Lose Ever And Anon A Word, A Verse, And Substitute Something Of Our Own, And Thus Miswrite The Poem.

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.

Our Opinions Of The World, Are Confessions Of Character.

Manners Require Time, And Nothing Is More Vulgar Than Haste.

The Wise Man, The True Friend, The Finished Character, We Seek Everywhere, And Only Find In Fragments.

You Can Take Better Care Of Your Secret Than Another Can.

Love Is Our Highest Word And The Synonym Of God.

True Wit Never Made Us Laugh.

Genial Manners Are Good, And Power Of Accommodation To Any Circumstance, But The High Prize Of Life, The Crowning Fortune Of A Man Is To Be Born With A Bias To Some Pursuit, Which Finds Him In Employment And Happiness, -- Whether It Be To Make Baskets, Or Broadswords, Or Canals, Or Statutes, Or Songs. I Doubt Not This Was The Meaning Of Socrates, When He Pronounced Artists The Only Truly Wise, As Being Actually, Not Apparently So.

Proverbs, Like The Sacred Books Of Each Nation, Are The Sanctuary Of The Intuitions. That Which The Droning World, Chained To Appearances, Will Not Allow The Realist To Say In His Own Words, It Will Suffer Him To Say In Proverbs Without Contradiction.

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

Where There Is No Vision A People Perish.

Men Grind And Grind In The Mill Of A Truism, And Nothing Comes Out But What Was Put In. But The Moment They Desert The Tradition For A Spontaneous Thought, Then Poetry, Wit, Hope, Virtue, Learning, Anecdote, And All Flock To Their Aid.

Every Thought Which Genius And Piety Throw Into The World Alters The World.

Every Ship Is A Romantic Object, Except That We Sail In. Embark, And The Romance Quits Our Vessel, And Hangs On Every Other Sail In The Horizon.

The Moment Our Discourse Rises Above The Ground-line Of Familiar Facts, And Is Inflamed With Passion Or Exalted Thought, It Clothes Itself In Images. A Man Conversing In Earnest, If He Watch His Intellectual Processes, Will Find That Always A Material Image, More Or Less Luminous, Arises In His Mind, Contemporaneous With Every Thought, Which Furnishes The Vestment Of The Thought.... This Imagery Is Spontaneous. It Is The Blending Of Experience With The Present Action Of The Mind. It Is Proper Creation.

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

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.

Society Everywhere Is In Conspiracy Against The Manhood Of Every One Of Its Members.

When I Read A Good Book, I Wish My Life Were Three Thousand Years Long.

A Walk In The Woods Is Only An Exalted Dream.

Not In Nature But In Man Is All The Beauty And Worth He Sees. The World Is Very Empty, And Is Indebted To This Gilding, Exalting Soul For All Its Pride.

Poverty Consist In Feeling Poor.

All Great Masters Are Chiefly Distinguished By The Power Of Adding A Second, A Third, And Perhaps A Fourth Step In A Continuous Line. Many A Man Has Taken The First Step. With Every Additional Step You Enhance Immensely The Value Of Your First.

Men Over Forty Are No Judges Of A Book Written In A New Spirit.

Wherever A Man Comes, There Comes Revolution. The Old Is For Slaves.

As The Eye Is The Best Composer, So Light Is The First Of Painters. There Is No Object So Foul That Intense Light Will Not Make Beautiful; And The Stimulus It Affords To The Sense, And A Sort Of Infinitude Which It Hath Like Space And Time, Make All Matter Gay.

Whatever Limits Us We Call Fate.

I Am Ashamed To See What A Shallow Village Tale Our So-called History Is.

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

Men In All Ways Are Better Than They Seem.

The Soul Circumscribes All Things.

The Society Of The Energetic Class, In Their Friendly And Festive Meetings, Is Full Of Courage, And Of Attempts, Which Intimidatethe Pale Scholar.

The Basis Of Good Manners Is Self-reliance.

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.

What's A Book? Everything Or Nothing. The Eye That Sees It All.

The Statue Is Then Beautiful When It Begins To Be Incomprehensible, When It Is Passing Out Of Criticism, And Can No Longer Be Defined By Compass And Measuring-wand, But Demands An Active Imagination To Go With It, And To Say What It Is In The Act Of Doing.

I See Not Any Road Of Perfect Peace Which A Man Can Walk But After The Counsel Of His Own Bosom.

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

Eloquence Must Be Grounded On The Plainest Narrative.

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.

The Age Of A Woman Doesn't Mean A Thing. The Best Tunes Are Played On The Oldest Fiddles.

I Do Not Count The Hours I Spend In Wandering By The Sea; The Forest Is My Loyal Friend, Like God It Useth Me.

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.

Spurious Prudence, Making The Senses Final, Is The God Of Sots And Cowards, And Is The Subject Of All Comedy. It Is Nature's Joke, And Therefore Literature's. True Prudence Limits This Sensualism By Admitting The Knowledge Of An Internal And Real World.

Undoubtedly We Have No Questions To Ask Which Are Unanswerable. We Must Trust The Perfection Of The Creation So Far, As To Believe That Whatever Curiosity The Order Of Things Has Awakened In Our Minds, The Order Of Things Can Satisfy. Every Man's Condition Is A Solution In Hieroglyphic To Those Inquiries He Would Put. He Acts It As Life, Before He Apprehends It As Truth.

A Cynic Can Chill And Dishearten With A Single Word.

And Truly It Demands Something God Like In Him Who Has Cast Off The Common Motives Of Humanity, And Has Ventured To Trust Himself For A Taskmaster. High Be His Heart, Faithful His Will, Clear His Sight, That He May In Good Earnest Be Doctrine, Society, Law, To Himself, That A Simple Purpose May Be To Him As Strong As Iron Necessity Is To Others!

We Love Flattery, Even Though We Are Not Deceived By It, Because It Shows That We Are Of Importance Enough To Be Courted.

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

Imagination Is A Very High Sort Of Seeing.

Our Distrust Is Very Expensive.

New Arts Destroy The Old.

I Have No Expectation That Any Man Will Read History Aright Who Thinks That What Was Done In A Remote Age, By Men Whose Names Have Resounded Far, Has Any Deeper Sense Than What He Is Doing Today.

To Be Yourself In A World That Is Constantly Trying To Make You Something Else Is The Greatest Accomplishment.

If The Aristocrat Is Only Valid In Fashionable Circles, And Not With Truckmen, He Will Never Be A Leader In Fashion; And If The Man Of The People Cannot Speak On Equal Terms With The Gentleman, So That The Gentleman Shall Perceive That He Is Already Really Of His Own Order, He Is Not To Be Feared.

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

There Is Not A Piece Of Science, But Its Flank May Be Turned Tomorrow.

Every Individual Strives To Grow And Exclude, To The Extremities Of The Universe, And To Impose The Law Of Its Being On Every Other Creature.

Cities Give Not The Human Senses Room Enough. We Go Out Daily And Nightly To Feed The Eyes On The Horizon, And Require So Much Scope, Just As We Need Water For Our Bath.

The Dearest Events Are Summer-rain.

A Man Must Consider What A Rich Realm He Abdicates When He Becomes A Conformist.

Being Different

The Right Eloquence Needs No Bell To Call The People Together, And No Constable To Keep Them.

The Aid We Can Give Each Other Is Only Incidental, Lateral, And Sympathetic.

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

Every Man Alone Is Sincere. At The Entrance Of A Second Person, Hypocrisy Begins. We Parry And Fend The Approach Of Our Fellow-man By Compliments, By Gossip, By Amusements, By Affairs. We Cover Up Our Thought From Him Under A Hundred Folds.

I Read The Other Day Some Verses Written By An Eminent Painter Which Were Original And Not Conventional. The Soul Always Hears An Admonition In Such Lines, Let The Subject Be What It May. The Sentiment They Instil Is Of More Value Than Any Thought They May Contain. To Believe Your Own Thought, To Believe That What Is True For You In Your Private Heart Is True For All Men, - That Is Genius.

The True Scholar Grudges Every Opportunity Of Action Passed, By, As A Loss Of Power.

Good Poetry Could Not Have Been Otherwise Written Than It Is. The First Time You Hear It, It Sounds Rather As If Copied Out Of Some Invisible Tablet In The Eternal Mind Than As If Arbitrarily Composed By The Poet.

What Is Man Born For But To Be A Reformer, A Remaker Of What Man Has Made? A Renouncer Of Lies; A Restorer Of Truth And Good? Imitating That Great Nature Which Embossoms Us All, And Which Sleeps No Moment On An Old Past, But Every Hour Repairs Herself, Yielding Us Every Morning A New Day, With Every Breath A New Life?

Not In His Goals But In His Transitions, Man Is Great.

A Mind Does Not Receive Truth As A Chest Receives Jewels That Are Put Into It, But As The Stomach Takes Up Food Into The System. It Is No Longer Food, But Flesh, And Is Assimilated. The Appetite And The Power Of Digestion Measure Our Right To Knowledge. He Has It Who Can Use It. As Soon As Our Accumulation Overruns Our Invention Or Power To Use, The Evils Of Intellectual Gluttony Begin,— Congestion Of The Brain, Apoplexy And Strangulation.

Examples Are Cited By Soldiers, Of Men Who Have Seen The Cannon Pointed, And The Fire Given To It, And Who Have Stepped Aside From He Path Of The Ball. The Terrors Of The Storm Are Chiefly Confined To The Parlour And The Cabin.

We Are As Much Strangers In Nature, As We Are Aliens From God. We Do Not Understand The Notes Of Birds. The Fox And The Deer Run Away From Us; The Bear And Tiger Rend Us. We Do Not Know The Uses Of More Than A Few Plants, As Corn And The Apple, The Potato And The Vine. Is Not The Landscape, Every Glimpse Of Which Hath A Grandeur, A Face Of Him?

All Things Are Flowing, Even Those That Seem Immovable. The Adamant Is Always Passing Into Smoke. The Plants Imbibe The Materialswhich They Want From The Air And The Ground. They Burn, That Is, Exhale And Decompose Their Own Bodies Into The Air And Earth Again. The Animal Burns, Or Undergoes The Like Perpetual Consumption. The Earth Burns, The Mountains Burn And Decompose, Slower, But Incessantly.

Every Mind Must Know The Whole Lesson For Itself,-must Go Over The Whole Ground. What It Does Not See, What It Does Not Live, It Will Not Know.

There Are No Days In Life So Memorable As Those Which Vibrate To Some Stroke Of The Imagination.

Tomorrow Is A New Day. You Shall Begin It Well And Serenely

Infancy Conforms To Nobody; All Conform To It.

Do Not Shut Up The Young People Against Their Will In A Pew, And Force The Children To Ask Them Questions For An Hour Against Their Will.

Postpone Not Your Life.

Procrastination

We Swim, Day By Day, On A River Of Delusions, And Are Effectually Amused With Houses And Towns In The Air, Of Which The Men Aboutus Are Dupes. But Life Is A Sincerity.

In The Uttermost Meaning Of The Words, Thought Is Devout, And Devotion Is Thought. Deep Calls Unto Deep.

We But Half Express Ourselves, And Are Ashamed Of That Divine Idea Which Each Of Us Represents.

Judicious Praise Is To Children What The Sun Is To Flowers. Christian Bovee A Little Praise Goes A Great Ways.

The Connection Between Our Knowledge And The Abyss Of Being Is Still Real, And The Explication Must Be Not Less Magnificent.

An Orator Or Author Is Never Successful Till He Has Learned To Make His Words Smaller Than His Ideas.

It Is Easy In The World To Live After The World's Opinion; It Is Easy In Solitude To Live After Our Own; But The Great Man Is He Who In The Midst Of The Crowd Keeps With Perfect Sweetness The Independence Of Solitude.

I Confess Myself Utterly At A Loss In Suggesting Particular Reforms In Our Ways Of Teaching. No Discretion That Can Be Lodged With A School-committee, With The Overseers Or Visitors Of An Academy, Of A College, Can At All Avail To Reach These Difficulties And Perplexities, But They Solve Themselves When We Leave Institutions And Address Individuals.

When I First Open My Eyes Upon The Morning Meadows And Look Out Upon The Beautiful World, I Thank God I Am Alive.

Society Acquires New Arts, And Loses Old Instincts.

Transcendentalism

A Man Is A Golden Impossibility. The Line He Must Walk Is A Hair's Breadth. The Wise Through Excess Of Wisdom Is Made A Fool.

Wherever The Truth Is Injured, Defend It.

...most Men Have Bound Their Eyes With One Or Another Handkerchief, And Attached Themselves To Some One Of These Communities Of Opinion. This Conformity Makes Them Not False In A Few Particulars, Authors Of A Few Lies, But False In All Particulars. Their Every Truth Is Not Quite True. Their Two Is Not The Real Two, Their Four Not The Real Four; So That Every Word They Say Chagrins Us, And We Know Not Where To Begin To Set Them Right.

The Pulpit And The Press Have Many Commonplaces Denouncing The Thirst For Wealth, But If Men Should Take These Moralists At Their Word, And Leave Off Aiming To Be Rich, The Moralists Would Rush To Rekindle At All Hazards This Love Of Power In The People, Lest Civilization Should Be Undone.

Wit Makes Its Own Welcome, And Levels All Distinctions.

To Educate The Wise Man, The State Exists; And With The Appearance Of The Wise Man, The State Expires. The Appearance Of Charactermakes The State Unnecessary. The Wise Man Is The State.

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

Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself. Nothing Can Bring You Peace But The Triumph Of Principles.

All Writing Is By The Grace Of God. People Do Not Deserve To Have Good Writing, They Are So Pleased With Bad. In These Sentences That You Show Me, I Can Find No Beauty, For I See Death In Every Clause And Every Word. There Is A Fossil Or A Mummy Character Which Pervades This Book. The Best Sepulchers, The Vastest Catacombs, Thebes And Cairo, Pyramids, Are Sepulchers To Me. I Like Gardens And Nurseries. Give Me Initiative, Spermatic, Prophesying, Man-making Words.

People That Seem So Glorious Are All Show; Underneath They Are Like Everyone Else.

Let Me Never Fall Into The Vulgar Mistake Of Dreaming That I Am Persecuted Whenever I Am Contradicted.

Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands.

He That Rides His Hobby Gently Must Always Give Way To Him That Rides His Hobby Hard.

In Analysing History Do Not Be Too Profound, For Often The Causes Are Quite Superficial.

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.

Europe Has Always Owed To Oriental Genius Its Divine Impulses. What These Holy Bards Said, All Sane Men Found Agreeable And True.

The Great Object Of Education Should Be Commensurate With The Object Of Life. It Should Be A Moral One; To Teach Self-trust: To Inspire The Youthful Man With An Interest In Himself; With A Curiosity Touching His Own Nature; To Acquaint Him With The Resources Of His Mind, And To Teach Him That There Is All His Strength.

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.

If You Believe In The Soul, Do Not Clutch At Sensual Sweetness Before It Is Ripe On The Slow Tree Of Cause And Effect.

Cut These Words And They Would Bleed; They Are Vascular And Alive.

Human Society Is Made Up Of Partialities. Each Citizen Has An Interest And A View Of His Own, Which, If Followed Out To The Extreme, Would Leave No Room For Any Other Citizen.

Power And Speed Be Hands And Feet.

Neither You Nor The World Knows What You Can Do Until You Have Tried.

A Great Man Is Always Willing To Be Little.

There Was Never Anything That Did Not Proceed From A Thought.

There Is Hope In Extravagance, There Is None In Routine.

No Law Can Be Sacred To Me But That Of My Nature. Good And Bad Are But Names Very Readily Transferable To That Or This; The Only Right Is What Is After My Constitution; The Only Wrong Is What Is Against It.

The First Wealth Is Health.

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.

The World Of Men Show Like A Comedy Without Laughter: Populations, Interests, Government, History; 't Is All Toy Figures In A Toyhouse.

The Intellect,-that Is Miraculous! Who Has It, Has The Talisman: His Skin And Bones, Though They Were Of The Color Of Night, Are Transparent, And The Everlasting Stars Shine Through, With Attractive Beams.

You've Got To Be Taught To Be Afraid Of People Whose Eyes Are Oddly Made And People Whose Skin Is A Different Shade.

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.

Fashion Which Affects To Be Honor, Is Often, In All Men's Experience, Only A Ballroom-code.

Nature Avenges Herself Speedily On The Hard Pedantry That Would Chain Her Waves. She Is No Literalist. Every Thing Must Be Taken Genially, And We Must Be At The Top Of Our Condition, To Understand Any Thing Rightly.

Let None Presume To Measure The Irregularities Of Michael Angelo Or Socrates By Village Scales.

A Man Must Know How To Estimate A Sour Face. The Sour Face Of The Multitude, Like Thier Sweet Faces, Have No Deep Cause, But Are Put On And Off As The Wind Blows And The Newspaper Directs.

Wisdom Will Never Let Us Stand With Any Man On An Unfriendly Footing. We Refuse Sympathy And Intimacy With People, As If We Waited For Some Better Sympathy Or Intimacy To Come. But Whence And When: Tomorrow Will Be Like Today. Life Wastes Itself While We Are Preparing To Live.

There Is No Way To Success In Art But To Take Off Your Coat, Grind Paint, And Work Like A Digger On The Railroad, All Day And Every Day.

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.

Sentimentalists ... Adopt Whatever Merit Is In Good Repute, And Almost Make It Hateful With Their Praise. The Warmer Their Expressions, The Colder We Feel.... Cure The Drunkard, Heal The Insane, Mollify The Homicide, Civilize The Pawnee, But What Lessons Can Be Devised For The Debauchee Of Sentiment?

Always Scorn Appearances And You Always May.

He Who Would Be A Man Must Therefore Be A Non-conformist.

The Work Of Vegetation Begins First In The Irritability Of The Bark And Leaf-buds.

We Come To Our Own And Would Make Friends With Matter, Which The Ambitious Chatter Of The Schools Would Persuade Us To Despise. We Can Never Part With It; The Mind Loves Its Old Home: As Water To Our Thirst, So Is Rock, The Ground, To Our Eyes, And Hands, And Feet. It Is Firm Water: It Is Cold Flame: What Health, What Affinity!

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.

The Torpid Artist Seeks Inspiration At Any Cost, By Virtue Or By Vice, By Friend Or By Fiend, By Prayer Or By Wine.

There Are Many Faculties In Man, Each Of Which Takes Its Turn Of Activity, And That Faculty Which Is Paramount In Any Period And Exerts Itself Through The Strongest Nation, Determines The Civility Of That Age: And Each Age Thinks Its Own The Perfection Of Reason.

When A Man Lives With God, His Voice Shall Be As Sweet As The Murmur Of The Brook And Rustle Of The Corn.

There Are Men Whose Language Is Strong And Defying Enough, Yet Their Eyes And Their Actions Ask Leave Of Other Men To Live.

Milton Says, That The Lyric Poet May Drink Wine And Live Generously, But The Epic Poet, He Who Shall Sing Of The Gods, And Their Descent Unto Men, Must Drink Water Out Of A Wooden Bowl. For Poetry Is Not "devil's Wine," But God's Wine.

Though Love Repine, And Reason Chafe, There Came A Voice Without Reply,- "'tis Man's Perdition To Be Safe, When For The Truth He Ought To Die."

I Like Sayers Of No Better Than I Like Sayers Of Yes.

A Lady With Whom I Was Riding In The Forest Said To Me That The Woods Always Seemed To Her To Wait, As If The Genii Who Inhabit Them Suspend Their Deeds Until The Wayfarer Had Passed Onward; A Thought Which Poetry Has Celebrated In The Dance Of The Fairies, Which Breaks Off On The Approach Of Human Feet.

A Friend May Be Nature's Most Magnificent Creation.

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.

Or Whipping Its Rough Surface For A Trout.

Greek Architecture Is The Flowering Of Geometry.

Beauty Is An Outward Gift, Which Is Seldom Despised, Except By Those To Whom It Has Been Refused.

Every Man's Task [his 'great Dream' And Impassioned Life-goal] Is His Life Preserver.

Heaven Walks Among Us Ordinarily Muffled In Such Triple Or Tenfold Disguises That The Wisest Are Deceived And No One Suspects The Days To Be Gods.

Our Admiration Of The Antique Is Not Admiration Of The Old, But Of The Natural.

Egotism Is A Kind Of Buckram That Gives Momentary Strength And Concentration To Men, And Seems To Be Much Used In Nature For Fabrics In Which Local And Spasmodic Energy Is Required.

The First And Last Lesson Of Religion Is, "the Things That Are Seen, Are Temporal; The Things That Are Unseen, Are Eternal." It Puts An Affront Upon Nature.

I Hear Therefore With Joy Whatever Is Beginning To Be Said Of The Dignity And Necessity Of Labor To Every Citizen. There Is Virtue Yet In The Hoe And The Spade, For Learned As Well As For Unlearned Hands. And Labor Is Everywhere Welcome; Always We Are Invited To Work; Only Be This Limitation Observed, That A Man Shall Not For The Sake Of Wider Activity Sacrifice Any Opinion To The Popular Judgments And Modes Of Action.

To The Body And Mind Which Have Been Cramped By Noxious Work Or Company, Nature Is Medicinal And Restores Their Tone. The Tradesman, The Attorney Comes Out Of The Din And Craft Of The Street And Sees The Sky And The Woods, And Is A Man Again. In Their Eternal Calm, He Finds Himself.

Enthusiasm Is The Engine Of Success.

Congratulations

Is The Parent Better Than The Child Into Whom He Has Cast His Ripened Being? Whence, Then, This Worship Of The Past?

The World Is His Who Has Money To Go Over It.

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

The Reason Of Idleness And Of Crime Is The Deferring Of Our Hopes. Whilst We Are Waiting, We Beguile The Time With Jokes, With Sleep, With Eating, And With Crimes.

When The Act Of Reflection Takes Place In The Mind, When We Look At Ourselves In The Light Of Thought, We Discover That Our Life Is Embosomed In Beauty.

Every Man Is A Quotation From All His Ancestors.

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