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There Are Books... Which Rank In Our Life With Parents And Lovers And Passionate Experiences.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There Are Books... Which

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There Are Books... Which Rank In Our Life With Parents And Lovers And Passionate Experiences.

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For Everything You Gain, You Lose Something.

Missing Someone

Cultivate The Habit Of Being Grateful... And ...give Thanks Continuously.

Gross And Obscure Natures, However Decorated, Seem Impure Shambles; But Character Gives Splendor To Youth, And Awe To Wrinkled Skin And Gray Hairs.

The Mob Is Man Voluntarily Descending To The Nature Of The Beast.

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 Take In A Lie, You Must Take In All That Belongs To It.

Earth Laughs In Flowers To See Her Boastful Boys Earth-proud, Proud Of The Earth Which Is Not Theirs; Who Steer The Plough, But Cannot Steer Their Feet Clear Of The Grave.

Truth Is Beautiful, Without Doubt; But So Are Lies.

When A Man Thinks Happily, He Finds No Foot-track In The Field He Traverses. All Spontaneous Thought Is Irrespective Of All Else.

Life Must Be Lived On A Higher Plane. We Must Go Up To A Higher Platform, To Which We Are Always Invited To Ascend; There, The Whole Aspect Of Things Changes.

Wise Cultivated, Genial Conversation Is The Last Flower Of Civilization, And The Best Result Which Life Has To Offer Us,--a Cup For Gods, Which Has No Repentance. Conversation Is Our Account Of Ourselves. All We Have, All We Can, All We Know, Is Brought Into Play, And As The Reproduction In Finer Form, Of All Our Havings.

Almost Every Man We Meet Requires Some Civility; Requires To Be Humored; - He Has Some Fame, Some Talent, Some Whim Of Religion Or Philanthropy In His Head That Is Not To Be Questioned, And Which Spoils All Conversation With Him. But A Friend Is A Sane Man Who Exercises Not My Ingenuity, But Me.

We Shall One Day Learn To Supersede Politics By Education. What We Call Our Root-and-branch Reforms Of Slavery, War, Gambling, Intemperance, Is Only Medicating The Symptoms. We Must Begin Higher Up, Namely, In Education.

There Is Properly No History, Only Biography.

Men Do What Is Called A Good Action, As Some Piece Of Courage Or Charity, Much As They Would Pay A Fine In Expiation Of Daily Non-appearance On Parade. Their Works Are Done As An Apology Or Extenuation Of Their Living In The World. I Do Not Wish To Expiate, But To Live. My Life Is Not An Apology, But A Life.

But There Is No End To The Praise Of Books, To The Value Of The Library. Who Shall Estimate Their Influence On Our Population Where All The Millions Read And Write ? It Is The Joy Of Nations That Man Can Communicate All His Thoughts, Discoveries And Virtues To Records That May Last For Centuries.

A Life In Harmony With Nature, The Love Of Truth And Virtue, Will Purge The Eyes To Understanding Her Text.

Self-trust Is The First Secret Of Success.

Nor Has Science Sufficient Humanity, So Long As The Naturalist Overlooks The Wonderful Congruity Which Subsists Between Man And The World; Of Which He Is Lord, Not Because He Is The Most Subtile Inhabitant, But Because He Is Its Head And Heart, And Finds Something Of Himself In Every Great And Small Thing, In Every Mountain Stratum, In Every New Law Of Color, Fact Of Astronomy, Or Atmospheric Influence Which Observation Or Analysis Lay Open.

Life Itself Is ... A Sleep Within A Sleep.

Nature Is A Frugal Mother, And Never Gives Without Measure. When She Has Work To Do, She Qualifies Men For That And Sends Them Equipped.

On Bravely Through The Sunshine And The Showers! Time Hath His Work To Do, And We Have Ours.

A Man Complained That On His Way Home To Dinner He Had Every Day To Pass Through That Long Field Of His Neighbor's. I Advised Him To Buy It, And It Would Never Seem Long Again.

Sport Is The Bloom And Glow Of A Perfect Health. The Great Will Not Condescend To Take Anything Seriously; All Must Be As Gay As The Song Of A Canary, Though It Were The Building Of Cities, Or The Eradication Of Old And Foolish Churches And Nations, Which Have Cumbered The Earth Long Thousands Of Years.

For Nonconformity The World Will Whip You With Its Displeasure.

We Are Always Getting Ready To Live, But Never Living... The Wave Moves Onward But The Particles Of Which It Is Composed Do Not... It Cannot Be But That At Intervals Throughout Society There Are Real Men Intermixed . . . As The Carpenter Puts One Iron Bar In His Bannister For Every Five Or Six Wooden Ones.

Knowledge Exists To Be Imparted.

All Reform Aims, In Some One Particular, To Let The Soul Have Its Way Through Us; In Other Words, To Engage Us To Obey.

Man Is The Will, And Woman The Sentiment. In This Ship Of Humanity, Will Is The Rudder, And Sentiment The Sail; When Woman Affects To Steer, The Rudder Is Only A Masked Sail.

All Promise Outruns Performance.

Let Us Interrogate The Great Apparition, That Shines So Peacefully Around Us.

Nothing Can Be Preserved That Is Not Good.

If Two Or Three Persons Should Come With A High Spiritual Aim And With Great Powers, The World Would Fall Into Their Hands Like A Ripe Peach.

The Field Cannot Be Seen From Within The Field.

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

Be Brave Enough To Do The Loving Thing.

Science Always Goes Abreast With The Just Elevation Of The Man, Keeping Step With Religion And Metaphysics; Or, The State Of Science Is An Index Of Our Self-knowledge.

A More Secret, Sweet, And Overpowering Beauty Appears To Man When His Heart And Mind Open To The Sentiment Of Virtue. Then He Is Instructed In What Is Set Above Him. He Learns That His Being Is Without Bound; That To The Good, To The Perfect, He Is Born, Low As He Now Lies In Evil And Weakness.

Make Yourself Necessary To Somebody.

Self Improvement

Friendship Love

Only So Much Of Life Do I Know As I Have Lived.

The Poet's Habit Of Living Should Be Set On A Key So Low That The Common Influences Should Delight Him.

It Is Sublime To Think And Say Of Another, I Need Never Meet, Or Speak, Or Write To Him: We Need Not Reinforce Ourselves, Or Send Tokens Of Remembrance; I Rely On Him As On Myself: If He Did Thus And Thus, I Know It Was Right.

The Office Of The Scholar Is To Cheer, To Raise, And To Guide Men By Showing Them Facts Amidst Appearances.

Freedom Is The Essence Of This Faith. It Has For Its Object Simply To Make Men Good And Wise. Its Institutions Then Should Be As Flexible As The Wants Of Men. That Form Out Of Which The Life And Suitableness Have Departed Should Be As Worthless In Its Eyes As The Dead Leaves That Are Falling Around Us.

To Say Then, The Majority Are Wicked, Means No Malice, No Bad Heart In The Observer, But, Simply That The Majority Are Unripe, Andhave Not Yet Come To Themselves, Do Not Yet Know Their Opinion.

Self-reliance Is Its Aversion. It Loves Not Realities And Creators, But Names And Customs.

Self-love Is, In Almost All Men, Such An Over-weight That They Are Incredulous Of A Man's Habitual Preference Of The General Good To His Own; But When They See It Proved By Sacrifices Of Ease, Wealth, Rank, And Of Life Itself, There Is No Limit To Their Admiration.

Speak Your Latent Conviction. . . Else Tomorrow A Stranger Will Say With Masterly Good Sense Precisely What We Have Thought And Felt All The Time, And We Shall Be Forced To Take With Shame Our Own Opinion From Another.

What Is The Imagination? Only An Arm Or Weapon Of The Interior Energy; Only The Precursor Of The Reason.

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.

Men Have Sometimes Exchanged Names With Their Friends, As If They Would Signify That In Their Friend Each Loved His Own Soul.

If We Shall Take The Good We Find, Asking No Questions, We Shall Have Heaping Measures.

Liberty Is Slow Fruit. It Is Never Cheap; It Is Made Difficult Because Freedom Is The Accomplishment And Perfectness Of Man.

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

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.

The Great Poet Makes Us Feel Our Own Wealth, And Then We Think Less Of His Compositions. His Best Communication To Our Mind Is To Teach Us To Despise All He Has Done.

The Hero Is Suffered To Be Himself.

All Necessary Truth Is Its Own Evidence.

Nature Is A Language And Every New Fact One Learns Is A New Word; But It Is Not A Language Taken To Pieces And Dead In The Dictionary, But The Language Put Together Into A Most Significant And Universal Sense. I Wish To Learn This Language - Not That I May Know A New Grammar, But That I May Read The Great Book Which Is Written In That Tongue.

The Solar System Has No Anxiety About Its Reputation.

How Casually And Unobservedly We Make All Our Most Valued Acquaintances.

Practice Makes Perfect - The Sooner You Start, The Sooner You Will Be A Happy Nonsmoker

To Help The Young Soul, To Add Energy, Inspire Hope, And Blow The Coals Into A Useful Flame; To Redeem Defeat By New Thought And Firm Action, This, Though Not Easy, Is The Work Of Divine Men.

Let Us Stun And Astonish The Intruding Rabble Of Men And Books And Institutions By A Simple Declaration Of The Divine Fact. Bid The Invaders Take The Shoes From Off Their Feet, For God Is Here Within.

I Now Require This Of All Pictures, That They Domesticate Me, Not That They Dazzle Me. Pictures Must Not Be Too Picturesque. Nothing Astonishes Men So Much As Common-sense And Plain Dealing. All Great Actions Have Been Simple, And All Great Pictures Are.

The Rich Mind Lies In The Sun And Sleeps, And Is Nature.

Where There Is No Vision A People Perish.

Sympathy Is A Supporting Atmosphere, And In It We Unfold Easily And Well.

Inaction Is Cowardice, But There Can Be No Scholar Without The Heroic Mind.

The Power Of A Man Increases Steadily By Continuance In One Direction. He Becomes Acquainted With The Resistances And With His Own Tools; Increases His Skill And Strength And Learns The Favorable Moments And Favorable Accidents.

Not Out Of Those, On Whom Systems Of Education Have Exhausted Their Culture, Comes The Helpful Giant To Destroy The Old Or To Build The New, But Out Of Unhandselled Savage Nature, Out Of Terrible Druids And Berserkirs, Come At Last Alfred And Shakespeare.

The Americans Have No Faith, They Rely On The Power Of A Dollar; They Are Deaf To Sentiment.

Beauty Is The Pilot Of The Young Soul.

Science Is Organized Knowledge. Wisdom Is Organized Life. Football Is Four 15-minute Quarters. Plus Timeouts And Commercials.

Almost All People Descend To Meet. All Association Must Be A Compromise, And, What Is Worst, The Very Flower And Aroma Of The Flower Of Each Of The Beautiful Natures Disappears As They Approach Each Other.

The True Ship Is The Ship Builder.

This Valley Is The Only Place That Comes Up To The Brag About It, And Exceeds It.

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.

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

Books Are The Best Of Things If Well Used; If Abused, Among The Worst. They Are Good For Nothing But To Inspire. I Had Better Never See A Book Than Be Warped By Its Attraction Clean Out Of My Own Orbit, And Made A Satellite Instead Of A System.

Creative Force, Like A Musical Composer, Goes On Unweariedly Repeating A Simple Air Or Theme, Now High, Now Low, In Solo, In Chorus, Ten Thousand Times Reverberated, Till It Fills Earth And Heaven With The Chant.

In These Divine Pleasures Permitted To Me Of Walks In The June Night Under Moon And Stars, I Can Put My Life As A Fact Before Me And Stand Aloof From Its Honor And Shame.

If I Made Laws For Shakers Or A School, I Should Gazette Every Saturday All The Words They Were Wont To Use In Reporting Religious Experience, As "spiritual Life," "god," "soul," "cross," Etc., And If They Could Not Find New Ones Next Week, They Might Remain Silent.

My Doom And My Strength Is To Be Solitary.

Commerce Is A Game Of Skill Which Everyone Cannot Play And Few Can Play Well.

Very Idle Is All Curiosity Concerning Other People's Estimate Of Us, And All Fear Of Remaining Unknown Is Not Less So.

There Are Twenty Ways Of Going To A Point, And One Is The Shortest; But Set Out At Once On One. A Man Who Has That Presence Of Mind Which Can Bring To Him On The Instant All He Knows, Is Worth For Action A Dozen Men Who Know As Much, But Can Only Bring It To Light Slowly.

Presence Of Mind

The Only Reward Of Virtue Is Virtue.

Overhead The Sanctities Of The Stars Shine Forever-more... Pouring Satire On The Pompous Business Of The Day Which They Close, And Making The Generations Of Men Show Slight And Evanescent.

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

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

Every Man's Reason Is Sufficient For His Guidance, If Used.

The Mind Will Quote Whether The Tongue Does Or Not.

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.

The Imitator Dooms Himself To Hopeless Mediocrity.

You Take A Weakness And Start Making It Stronger.. You Don't Have To Build Your Strengths - That You Already Possess... It Is Your Weakness That Needs The Exercise

The Ocean Is A Large Drop; A Drop Is A Small Ocean.

If The Stars Should Appear One Night In A Thousand Years, How Would Men Believe And Adore; And Preserve For Many Generations The Remembrance Of The City Of God Which Had Been Shown! But Every Night Come Out These Envoys Of Beauty, And Light The Universe With Their Admonishing Smile.

Raphael Paints Wisdom, Handel Sings It, Phidias Carves It, Shakespeare Writes It, Wren Builds It, Columbus Sails It, Luther Preaches It, Washington Arms It, Watt Mechanizes It.

America Means Opportunity, Freedom, Power.

All Violence, All That Is Dreary And Repels, Is Not Power, But The Absence Of Power.

The Poor And The Low Have Their Way Of Expressing The Last Facts Of Philosophy As Well As You. "blessed Be Nothing," And "the Worse Things Are, The Better They Are," Are Proverbs Which Express The Transcendentalism Of Common Life.

The Squirrel Hoards Nuts And The Bee Gathers Honey, Without Knowing What They Do, And They Are Thus Provided For Without Selfishness Or Disgrace.

I Cannot Marry The Facts Of William Shakespeare To His Verse: Other Men Had Led Lives In Some Sort Of Keeping With Their Thought, But This Man Is In Wide Contrast.

When A Man Speaks The Truth In The Spirit Of Truth, His Eye Is As Clear As The Heavens. When He Has Base Ends, And Speaks Falsely, The Eye Is Muddy, And Sometimes Asquint.

No Rent-roll Nor Army-list Can Dignify Skulking And Dissimulation: And The First Point Of Courtesy Must Always Be Truth, As Really All The Forms Of Good-breeding Point That Way.

I Wiped Away The Weeds And Foam, I Fetched My Sea-borne Treasures Home.

Love Is The Bright Foreigner, The Foreign Self.

Skepticism Is Unbelief In Cause And Effect.

Cause And Effect

Solitude Is Impractical, And Society Fatal. We Must Keep Our Head In The One And Our Hands In The Other. The Conditions Are Met, If We Keep Our Independence, Yet Do Not Lose Our Sympathy.

The Action Of The Soul Is Oftener In That Which Is Felt And Left Unsaid Than In That Which Is Said In Any Conversation. It Broods Over Every Society, And Men Unconsciously Seek For It In Each Other.

The Only Gift Is A Portion Of Thyself . . . The Poet Brings His Poem; The Shepherd His Lamb. . . .

The Secret Of Success In Society Is A Certain Heartiness And Sympathy.

Secret To Success

Jesus And Shakespeare Are Fragments Of The Soul, And By Love I Conquer And Incorporate Them In My Own Conscious Domain. His Virtue,--is Not That Mine? His Wit,--if It Cannot Be Made Mine, It Is Not Wit.

Our Impatience Of Miles, When We Are In A Hurry; But It Is Still Best That A Mile Should Have Seventeen Hundred And Sixty Yards.

Enlarge Not Thy Destiny, Said The Oracle: Endeavor Not To Do More Than Is Given Thee In Charge.

Courage Consists In Equality To The Problem Before Us.

The Surest Poison Is Time.

Time Management

The Influence Of The Senses Have In Men Overpowered The Thought To The Degree That The Walls Of Time And Space Have Come To Look Solid, Real And Insurmountable. .. Yet Time And Space Are But Inverse Measures Of The Power Of The Mind. Man Is Capable Of Abolishing Them Both.

Prayer That Craves A Particular Commodity, Anything Less Than All Good, Is Vicious.

Truth Is The Summit Of Being; Justice Is The Application Of It To Affairs.

The Nonchalance Of Boys Who Are Sure Of A Dinner, And Would Disdain As Much As A Lord To Do Or Say Aught To Conciliate One, Is The Healthy Attitude Of Human Nature.

The Merit Of Those Who Fill A Space In The World's History, Who Are Borne Forward, As It Were, By The Weight Of Thousands Whom They Lead, Shed A Perfume Less Sweet Than Do The Sacrifices Of Private Virtue.

I Think All Men Know Better Than They Do; Know That The Institutions We So Volubly Commend Are Go-carts And Baubles; But They Darenot Trust Their Presentiments.

The Etymologist Finds The Deadest Word To Have Been Once A Brilliant Picture. Language Is Fossil Poetry. As The Limestone Of The Continent Consists Of Infinite Masses Of The Shells Of Animalcules, So Language Is Made Up Of Images Or Tropes, Which Now, In Their Secondary Use, Have Long Ceased To Remind Us Of Their Poetic Origin.

If We Follow The Truth, It Will Bring Us Out Safe At Last.

Every Really Able Man, In Whatever Direction He Works - A Man Of Large Affairs, An Inventor, A Statesman, An Orator, A Poet, A Painter - If You Talk Sincerely With Him, Considers His Work, However Much Admired, As Far Short Of What It Should Be. What Is This Better, This Flying Ideal, But The Perpetual Promise Of His Creator?

Make Youself Necessary To Someone.

Every Wall Is A Door.

The Divine Gift Is Ever The Instant Life, Which Receives And Uses And Creates, And Can Well Bury The Old In The Omnipotency With Which Nature Decomposes All Her Harvest For Recomposition.

The Line Of Beauty Is The Line Of Perfect Economy.

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

Our Age Is Very Cheap And Intelligible. Unroof Any House, And You Shall Find It. The Well-being Consists In Having A Sufficiency Of Coffee And Toast, With A Daily Newspaper; A Well Glazed Parlor, With Marbles, Mirrors And Centre-table; And The Excitement Of A Few Parties And A Few Rides In A Year.

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.

I Like The Silent Church Before The Service Begins, Better Than Any Preaching. How Far Off, How Cool, How Chaste The Persons Look,begirt Each One With A Precinct Or Sanctuary!

Life Too Near Paralyses Art.

Let Us Replace Sentimentalism By Realism And Dare To Uncover Those Simple And Terrible Laws Which, Be They Seen Or Unseen, Pervade And Govern.

The Less A Man Thinks Or Knows About His Virtues, The Better We Like Him.

The Wise Skeptic Does Not Teach Doubt But How] To Look For The Permanent In The Mutable And Fleeting.

Knowledge Is The Knowing That We Cannot Know.

There Are Books... Which Rank In Our Life With Parents And Lovers And Passionate Experiences.

It Makes A Great Difference In The Force Of A Sentence, Whether A Man Be Behind It Or No.

At Times The Whole World Seems To Be In Conspiracy To Importune You With Emphatic Trifles. Friend, Client, Child, Sickness, Fear, Want, Charity, All Knock At Once At Thy Closet Door And Say,—'come Out Unto Us.' But Keep Thy State; Come Not Into Their Confusion. The Power Men Possess To Annoy Me I Give Them By A Weak Curiosity. No Man Can Come Near Me But Through My Act.

There Are Some Men Above Grief And Some Men Below It.

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.

The Goof Man, In Dealing With His People, Taxes Them With Luxury.

We Boil At Different Degrees.

Being Different

Slavery Is No Scholar, No Improver; It Does Not Love The Whistle Of The Railroad; It Does Not Love The Newspaper, The Mailbag, A College, A Book Or A Preacher Who Has The Absurd Whim Of Saying What He Thinks; It Does Not Increase The White Population; It Does Not Improve The Soil; Everything Goes To Decay.

Under The Dominion Of An Idea, Which Possesses The Minds Of Multitudes, As Civil Freedom, Or The Religious Sentiment, The Power Ofpersons Are No Longer Subjects Of Calculation. A Nation Of Men Unanimously Bent On Freedom, Or Conquest, Can Easily Confound The Arithmetic Of Statists, And Achieve Extravagant Actions, Out Of All Proportion To Their Means; As, The Greeks, The Saracens, The Swiss, The Americans, And The French Have Done.

Nature Is No Sentimentalist, - Does Not Cosset Or Pamper Us. We Must See That The World Is Rough And Surly, And Will Not Mind Drowning A Man Or A Woman; But Swallows Your Ship Like A Grain Of Dust. The Cold, Inconsiderate Of Persons, Tingles Your Blood, Benumbs Your Feet, Freezes A Man Like An Apple. The Diseases, The Elements, Fortune, Gravity, Lightning, Respect No Persons.

The Most Useful Man In The Most Useful World, So Long As Only Commodity Was Served, Would Remain Unsatisfied. But, As Fast As He Sees Beauty, Life Acquires A Very High Value.

But Harder Still It Has Proved To Resist And Rule The Dragon Money, With His Paper Wings. Chancellors And Boards Of Trade, Pitt, Peel, And Bobinson, And Their Parliaments, And Their Whole Generation, Adopted False Principles, And Went To Their Graves In The Belief That They Were Enriching The Country Which They Were Impoverishing.

I Am The Lover Of Uncontained And Immortal Beauty. In The Wilderness, I Find Something More Dear And Connate Than In Streets Or Villages. In The Tranquil Landscape, And Especially In The Distant Line Of The Horizon, Man Beholds Somewhat As Beautiful As His Own Nature.

But To Most Of Us Society Shows Not Its Face And Eye, But Its Side And Back. To Stand In True Relations With Men In A False Age Isworth A Fit Of Insanity, Is It Not?

In Dreams We Are True Poets; We Create The Persons Of The Drama; We Give Them Appropriate Figures Faces, Costumes; They Are Perfect In Their Organs, Attitudes, Manners; Moreover They Speak After Their Own Characters, Not Ours; And We Listen With Surprise To What They Say.

No One Can Read The History Of Astronomy Without Perceiving That Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, Are Not New Men, Or A New Kind Of Men, But That Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, Had Anticipated Them.

The Moment We Indulge Our Affections, The Earth Is Metamorphosed.

There Is No Den In The Wide World To Hide A Rogue. Commit A Crime, And The Earth Is Made Of Glass. Commit A Crime, And It Seems As If A Coat Of Snow Fell On The Ground, Such As Reveals In The Woods The Track Of Every Partridge And Fox And Squirrel And Mole.

Every Discourse Is An Approximate Answer: But It Is Of Small Consequence, That We Do Not Get It Into Verbs And Nouns, Whilst It Abides For Contemplation Forever.

Life Is Wasted In The Necessary Preparation Of Finding What Is The True Way, And We Die Just As We Enter It.

The Maker Of A Sentence Launches Out Into The Infinite.

Creative Writing

Work And Thou Canst Escape The Reward; Whether The Work Be Fine Or Course, Planting Corn Or Writing Epics, So Only It Be Honest Work, Done To Thine Own Approbation, It Shall Earn A Reward To The Senses As Well As To The Thought.

In A Virtuous Action, I Properly Am; In A Virtuous Act, I Add To The World; I Plant Into Deserts Conquered From Chaos And Nothing, And See The Darkness Receding On The Limits Of The Horizon.

There Is A Time When A Man Distinguishes The Idea Of Felicity From The Idea Of Wealth; It Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

Therefore We Value The Poet. All The Argument And All The Wisdom Is Not In The Encyclopedia, Or The Treatise On Metaphysics, Or The Body Of Divinity, But In The Sonnet Or The Play.

One Of The Illusions Of Life Is That The Present Hour Is Not The Critical, Decisive One.

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

Everything Runs To Excess; Every Good Quality Is Noxious If Unmixed.

Universities Are Of Course Hostile To Geniuses.

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.

It Seems As If Nature, In Regarding The Geologic Night Behind Her, When, In Five Or Six Millenniums, She Had Turned Out Five Or Six Men, As Homer, Phidias, Menu, And Columbus, Was No Wise Discontented With The Result. These Samples Attested The Virtue Of The Tree.

A Scholar Does Not Wish To Be Always Pumping His Brains; He Wants Gossips.

The Eye Is Easily Frightened.

Justice Satisfies Everybody, And Justice Alone.

If You Cannot Be Free Be As Free As You Can.

It Is Greatest To Believe And To Hope Well Of The World, Because He Who Does So, Quits The World Of Experience, And Makes The World He Lives In.

There Are Always Two Parties; The Establishment And The Movement.

Nature Arms Each Man With Some Faculty Which Enables Him To Do Easily Some Feat Impossible To Any Other, And Thus Makes Him Necessary To Society. ... Society Can Never Prosper, But Must Always Be Bankrupt, Until Every Man Does That Which He Was Created To Do.

Among Provocative, The Next Best Thing To Good Preaching Is Bad Preaching.

Great Men, Great Nations, Have Not Been Boasters And Buffoons, But Perceivers Of The Terror Of Life, And Have Manned Themselves To Face It.

There Is No Prosperity, Trade, Art, City, Or Great Material Wealth Of Any Kind, But If You Trace It Home, You Will Find It Rooted In A Thought Of Some Individual Man.

We Are Too Civil To Books. For A Few Golden Sentences We Will Turn Over And Actually Read A Volume Of Four Or Five Hundred Pages.

Of The Shaker Society, It Was Formerly A Sort Of Proverb In The Country, That They Always Sent The Devil To Market.

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

Must We Always Talk For Victory, And Never Once For Truth, For Comfort, And Joy?

Comfort And Joy

Ah Fate, Cannot A Man Be Wise Without A Beard? East, West, From Beer To Dan, Say, Was It Never Heard That Wisdom Might In Youth Be Gotten, Or Wit Be Ripe Before 't Was Rotten?

The Universe Is The Externisation Of The Soul. Wherever The Life Is, That Bursts Into Appearance Around It. Our Science Is Sensual, And Therefore Superficial. The Earth, And The Heavenly Bodies, Physics, And Chemistry, We Sensually Treat, As If They Were Self-existent; But These Are The Retinue Of That Being We Have.

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.

I Feel The Same Truth How Often In My Trivial Conversation With My Neighbours, That Somewhat Higher In Each Of Us Overlooks This By-play, And Jove Nods To Jove From Behind Each Of Us.

We See The World Piece By Piece, As The Sun, The Moon, The Animal, The Tree; But The Whole, Of Which These Are Shining Parts, Is The Soul.

I Have Been Told, That In Some Public Discourses Of Mine My Reverence For The Intellect Has Made Me Unjustly Cold To The Personalrelations. But Now I Almost Shrink At The Remembrance Of Such Disparaging Words. For Persons Are Love's World, And The Coldest Philosopher Cannot Recount The Debt Of The Young Soul Wandering Here In Nature To The Power Of Love, Without Being Tempted To Unsay, As Treasonable To Nature, Aught Derogatory To The Social Instincts.

Sincerity Is The Highest Complement You Can Pay

It Is Better To Suffer Injustice Than To Do It.

Though We Travel The World Over To Find The Beautiful, We Must Carry It With Us, Or We Find It Not. The Best Of Beauty Is A Finer Charm Than Skill In Surfaces, In Outlines, Or Rules Of Art Can Ever Teach, Namely, A Radiation From The Work Of Art Of Human Character, — A Wonderful Expression Through Stone, Or Canvas, Or Musical Sound, Of The Deepest And Simplest Attributes Of Our Nature, And Therefore Most Intelligible At Last To Those Souls Which Have These Attributes.

I'm Happier. I Guess I Made Up My Mind To Be That Way.

When A Dog Is Chasing After You, Whistle For Him.

When It Is Darkest, We Can See The Stars.

Suicide Inspirational

The Relations Of The Soul To The Divine Spirit Are So Pure, That It Is Profane To Seek To Interpose Helps.

The Use Of Literature Is To Afford Us A Platform Whence We May Command A View Of Our Present Life, A Purchase By Which We May Move It....we See Literature Best From The Midst Of Wild Nature, Or From The Din Of Affairs, Or From A High Religion. The Field Cannot Be Well Seen From Within The Field.

Give Me Wine To Wash Me Clean Of The Weather-stains Of Cares

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David Coverdale

Soren Kierkegaard

Daniel J. Boorstin

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