Background Image

...

We Sometimes Observe That Spoiled Children Contract A Habit Of Annoying Quite Wantonly Those Who Have Charge Of Them, And Seem Tomeasure Their Own Sense Of Well-being, Not By What They Do, But By The Degree Of Reaction They Can Cause. It Is Vain To Get Rid Of Them By Not Minding Them: If Purring And Humming Is Not Noticed, They Squeal And Screech; Then If You Chide And Console Them, They Find The Experiment Succeeds, And They Begin Again. The Child Will Sit In Your Arms Contented If You Do Nothing. If You Take A Book And Read, He Commences Hostile Operations.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Sometimes Observe That

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

We Sometimes Observe That Spoiled Children Contract A Habit Of Annoying Quite Wantonly Those Who Have Charge Of Them, And Seem Tomeasure Their Own Sense Of Well-being, Not By What They Do, But By The Degree Of Reaction They Can Cause. It Is Vain To Get Rid Of Them By Not Minding Them: If Purring And Humming Is Not Noticed, They Squeal And Screech; Then If You Chide And Console Them, They Find The Experiment Succeeds, And They Begin Again. The Child Will Sit In Your Arms Contented If You Do Nothing. If You Take A Book And Read, He Commences Hostile Operations.

Views: 11

Topic

More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

All Great Successes Are The Triumph Of Persistence.

A Man Is But A Little Thing In The Midst Of The Objects Of Nature, Yet, By The Moral Quality Radiating From His Countenance, He May Abolish All Considerations Of Magnitude, And In His Manners Equal The Majesty Of The World.

Music Causes Us To Think Eloquently.

A Friend, Therefore, Is A Sort Of Paradox In Nature. I Who Alone Am, I Who See Nothing In Nature Whose Existence I Can Affirm With Equal Evidence To My Own, Behold Now The Semblance Of My Being, In All Its Height, Variety, And Curiosity, Reiterated In A Foreign Form; So That A Friend May Well Be Reckoned The Masterpiece Of Nature.

The Buddhist, Who Thanks No Man, Who Says "do Not Flatter Your Benefactors," But Who, In His Conviction That Every Good Deed Can By No Possibility Escape Its Reward, Will Not Deceive The Benefactor By Pretending That He Has Done More Than He Should, Is A Transcendentalist.

There Is A Certain Wisdom Of Humanity Which Is Common To The Greatest Men With The Lowest, And Which Our Ordinary Education Oftenlabors To Silence And Obstruct.

A Moody Child And Wildly Wise Pursued The Game With Joyful Eyes, Which Chose, Like Meteors, Their Way, And Rived The Dark With Private Ray.

We Are Very Near To Greatness: One Step And We Are Safe; Can We Not Take The Leap?

The Intelligent Have A Right Over The Ignorant, Namely, The Right Of Instructing Them. The Right Punishment Of One Out Of Tune, Isto Make Him Play In Tune; The Fine Which The Good, Refusing To Govern, Ought To Pay, Is, To Be Governed By A Worse Man; That His Guards Shall Not Handle Gold And Silver, But Shall Be Instructed That There Is Gold And Silver In Their Souls, Which Will Make Men Willing To Give Them Every Thing Which They Need.

The Democrat Is A Young Conservative; The Conservative Is An Old Democrat. The Aristocrat Is The Democrat Ripe, And Gone To Seed,--because Both Parties Stand On The One Ground Of The Supreme Value Of Property, Which One Endeavors To Get, And The Other To Keep.

But It Is A Cold, Lifeless Business When You Go To The Shops To Buy Something, Which Does Not Represent Your Life And Talent, But A Goldsmith's.

A State Of War Or Anarchy, In Which Law Has Little Force, Is So Far Valuable, That It Puts Every Man On Trial. The Man Of Principle Is Known As Such, And Even In The Fury Of Faction Is Respected.

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

Law Of Contrariness: Our Chief Want In Life Is Somebody Who Shall Make Us Do What We Can. Having Found Them, We Shall Then Hate Them For It.

Eloquence Shows The Power And Possibility Of Man.

Tobacco And Opium Have Broad Backs, And Will Cheerfully Carry The Load Of Armies, If You Choose To Make Them Pay High For Such Joy As They Give And Such Harm As They Do.

If Eyes Were Made For Seeing, Then Beauty Is Its Own Excuse For Being.

A Man Must Be In Sympathy With Society Around Him, Or Else, Not Wish To Be In Sympathy With It. If Neither Of These Two, He Must Be Wretched.

Without Ambition One Starts Nothing. Without Work One Finishes Nothing. The Prize Will Not Be Sent To You. You Have To Win It. The Man Who Knows How Will Always Have A Job. The Man Who Also Knows Why Will Always Be His Boss. As To Methods There May Be A Million And Then Some, But Principles Are Few. The Man Who Grasps Principles Can Successfully Select His Own Methods. The Man Who Tries Methods, Ignoring Principles, Is Sure To Have Trouble.

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.

But Hospitality Must Be For Service, And Not For Show, Or It Pulls Down The Host. The Brave Soul Rates Itself Too High To Value Itself By The Splendor Of Its Table And Draperies. It Gives What It Hath, And All It Hath, But Its Own Majesty Can Lend A Better Grace To Bannocks And Fair Water Than Belong To City Feasts.

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

The Genius Of The Platonists, Is Intoxicating To The Student, Yet How Few Particulars Of It Can I Detach From All Their Books.

The Sun Shines Today Also.

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

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

Evil Is Merely Privative, Not Absolute: It Is Like Cold, Which Is The Privation Of Beat.

I See That Sensible Men And Conscientious Men All Over The World Were Of One Religion Of Well-doing And Daring.

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

God Will Not Have His Work Made Manifest By Cowards

When Believers And Unbelievers Live In The Same Manner - I Distrust The Religion.

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.

My Son, A Perfect Little Boy Of Five Years And Three Months, Had Ended His Earthly Life. You Can Never Sympathize With Me; You Can Never Know How Much Of Me Such A Young Child Can Take Away. A Few Weeks Ago I Accounted Myself A Very Rich Man, And Now The Poorest Of All.

Prayer As A Means To Effect A Private End Is Theft And Meanness.

Nothing Is Beneath You If It Is In The Direction Of Your Life.

We Expect A Great Man To Be A Good Reader.

Many Photographers Think They Are Photographing Nature When They Are Only Caricaturing Her.

If The Red Slayer Think He Slays, Or If The Slain Think He Is Slain, They Know Not Well The Subtle Ways, I Keep And Pass And Turn Again.

Men In All Ways Are Better Than They Seem.

The Crystal Sphere Of Thought Is As Concentrical As The Geological Structure Of The Globe. As Our Soils And Rocks Lie In Strata, Concentric Strata, So Do All Men's Thinkings Run Laterally, Never Vertically.

Our Religion Vulgarly Stands On Numbers Of Believers. Whenever The Appeal Is Made--no Matter How Indirectly--to Numbers, Proclamation Is Then And There Made, That Religion Is Not. He That Finds God A Sweet, Enveloping Presence, Who Shall Dare To Come In?

You Shall Have Joy, Or You Shall Have Power, Said God; You Shall Not Have Both.

Those Who Have Ruled Human Destinies, Like Planets, For Thousands Of Years, Were Not Handsome Men.

Fear Always Springs From Ignorance.

You Must Pay For Conformity. All Goes Well As Long As You Run With Conformists. But You, Who Are Honest Men In Other Particulars, Know That There Is Alive Somewhere A Man Whose Honesty Reaches To This Point Also, That He Shall Not Kneel To False Gods, And, On The Day When You Meet Him, You Sink Into The Class Of Counterfeits.

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.

New York Is A Sucked Orange.

I Give You Joy Of Your Free And Brave Thought. I Have Great Joy In It. I Find Incomparable Things Said Incomparably Well, As They Must Be. I Find The Courage Of Treatment Which So Delights Us, And Which Large Perception Only Can Inspire.

If You Visit Your Friend, Why Need You Apologize For Not Having Visited Him, And Waste His Time And Deface Your Own Act? Visit Him Now.

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

The Multitude Of The Sick Shall Not Make Us Deny The Existence Of Health.

In Order For One To Learn The Important Lessons Of Life, One Must First Overcome A Fear Each Day.

The History Of Persecution Is A History Of Endeavors To Cheat Nature, To Make Water Run Up Hill, To Twist A Rope Of Sand.

Traveling Is A Fool's Paradise.

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.

Youth Is Everywhere In Place.

It Sometimes Occurs That Memory Has A Personality Of Its Own And Volunteers Or Refuses Its Information At Its Will, Not At Mine.

Life Is To Be Lived, Not Controlled.

The Essence Of Greatness Is The Perception That Virtue Is Enough.

Consider What You Have In The Smallest Chosen Library. A Company Of The Wisest And Wittiest Men That Could Be Picked Out Of All Civil Countries, In A Thousand Years, Have Set In Best Order The Results Of Their Learning And Wisdom.

Education Should Be As Broad As Man.

Teach The Children! It Is Painting In Fresco.

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

Some Will Always Be Above Others. Destroy The Inequality Today, And It Will Appear Again Tomorrow.

The Difference Between Talent And Genius Is That Talent Says Things Which He Has Never Heard But Once, And Genius Things Which He Has Never Heard.

To The Men Of This World, To The Animal Strength And Spirits, To The Men Of Practical Power, Whilst Immersed In It, The Man Of Ideas Appears Out Of His Reason. They Alone Gave Reason.

As The Gardener, By Severe Pruning, Forces The Sap Of The Tree Into One Or Two Vigorous Limbs, So Should You Stop Off Your Miscellaneous Activity And Concentrate Your Force On One Or A Few Points.

Self Sacrifice Is The Real Miracle Out Of Which All The Reported Miracles Grow.

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

Proverbs Are The Literature Of Reason, Or The Statements Of Absolute Truth, Without Qualification. Like The Sacred Books Of Each Nation, They Are The Sanctuary Of Its Intuitions.

What Strength Belongs To Every Plant And Animal In Nature. The Tree Or The Brook Has No Duplicity, No Pretentiousness, No Show. It Is, With All Its Might And Main, What It Is, And Makes One And The Same Impression And Effect At All Times. All The Thoughts Of A Turtle Are Turtle's, And Of A Rabbit, Rabbit's. But A Man Is Broken And Dissipated By The Giddiness Of His Will; He Does Not Throw Himself Into His Judgments; His Genius Leads Him One Way But 't Is Likely His Trade Or Politics In Quite Another.

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

Genius Seems To Consistent Merely In Trueness Of Sight.

Government Exists To Defend The Weak And The Poor And The Injured Party; The Rich And The Strong Can Better Take Care Of Themselves.

People Are Timid And Apologetic; They Are No Longer Upright; They Dare Not Say "i Think," "i Am," But Quote Some Saint Or Sage. They Are Ashamed Before The Blade Of Grass Or The Blowing Rose. These Roses Under My Window Make No Reference To Former Roses Or To Better Ones; They Are For What They Are; They Exist With God To-day.

Literature Is Eavesdropping.

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

Truly Speaking, It Is Not Instruction, But Provocation, That I Can Receive From Another Soul. What He Announces, I Must Find True In Me, Or Reject; And On His Word, Or As His Second, Be He Who He May, I Can Accept Nothing.

"though Many Painters And Sculptors Talk Glibly Of "going In For Photography," You Will Find That Very Few Of Them Can Ever Make A Picture By Photography; They Lack The Science, Technical Knowledge, And Above All The Practice. Most People Think They Can Play Tennis, Shoot, Write Novels, And Photograph As Well As Any Other Person - Until They Try."

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.

Cunning Is Strength Withheld.

The Sciences, Even The Best,-mathematics And Astronomy,-are Like Sportsmen, Who Seize Whatever Prey Offers, Even Without Being Able To Make Any Use Of It.

As We Grow Old, The Beauty Steals Inward.

'tis A Good Rule In Every Journey To Provide Some Piece Of Liberal Study To Rescue The Hours Which Bad Weather, Bad Company, And Taverns Steal From The Best Economist.

Great Causes Are Never Tried On Their Merits; But The Cause Is Reduced To Particulars To Suit The Size Of The Partizans, And The Contention Is Ever Hottest On Minor Matters.

The Creation Of A Thousand Forests Is In One Acorn.

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

Thus Is Man Made Equal To Every Event. He Can Face Danger For The Right. A Poor, Tender, Painful Body, He Can Run Into Flame Or Bullets Or Pestilence, With Duty For His Guide.

The Only Money Of God Is God. He Pays Never With Any Thing Less, Or Any Thing Else.

I Honor Health As The First Muse, And Sleep As The Condition Of Health. Sleep Benefits Mainly By The Sound Health It Produces; Incidentally Also By Dreams, Into Whose Farrago A Divine Lesson Is Sometimes Slipped.

If You Would Know What Nobody Knows, Read What Everybody Reads, Just One Year Afterwards.

Every Thing Admonishes Us How Needlessly Long Life Is.

The First Thing A Great Person Does Is Make Us Realize The Insignificance Of Circumstance.

There Is, In All Great Poets, A Wisdom Of Humanity Which Is Superior To Any Talents They Exercise.

The Sower May Mistake And Sow His Peas Crookedly; The Peas Make No Mistake, But Come Up And Show His Line.

We Are Born Believing. A Man Bears Beliefs As A Tree Bears Apples.

We Dress Our Garden, Eat Our Dinners, Discuss The Household With Our Wives, And These Things Make No Impression, Are Forgotten Next Week; But In The Solitude To Which Every Man Is Always Returning, He Has A Sanity And Revelations, Which In His Passage Into New Worlds He Will Carry With Him. Never Mind The Ridicule, Never Mind The Defeat: Up Again, Old Heart! — It Seems To Say, — There Is Victory Yet For All Justice; And The True Romance Which The World Exists To Realize, Will Be The Transformation Of Genius Into Practical Power.

Jesus Christ Belonged To The True Race Of The Prophets. He Saw With An Open Eye The Mystery Of The Soul. . Alone In All History He Estimated The Greatness Of Man.

Great Men Are Sincere.

We Can See Well Into The Past; We Can Guess Shrewdly Into The Future, But That Which Is Rolled Up And Muffled In Impenetrable Folds Is Today.

A Beautiful Soul Always Dwells In A Beautiful World.

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.

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

Intellect Is A Fire; Rash And Pitiless It Melts This Wonderful Bone-house Which Is Called Man. Genius Even, As It Is The Greatestgood, Is The Greatest Harm.

It Is Always A Practical Difficulty With Clubs To Regulate The Laws Of Election So As To Exclude Peremptorily Every Social Nuisance. Nobody Wishes Bad Manners. We Must Have Loyalty And Character.

There Will Always Be In Society Certain Persons Who Are Mercuries Of Its Approbation, And Whose Glance Will At Any Time Determinefor The Curious Their Standing In The World. These Are The Chamberlains Of The Lesser Gods. Accept Their Coldness As An Omen Of Grace With The Loftier Deities, And Allow Them All Their Privilege.

We Are Symbols, And Inhabit Symbols.

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

Man Carries The World In His Head, The Whole Astronomy And Chemistry Suspended In A Thought. Because The History Of Nature Is Charactered In His Brain, Therefore He Is The Prophet And Discoverer Of Her Secrets. Every Known Fact In Natural Science Was Divined By The Presentiment Of Somebody, Before It Was Actually Verified.

No Institution Will Be Better Than The Institutor.

Herein Is The Explanation Of The Analogies, Which Exist In All The Arts. They Are The Re-appearance Of One Mind, Working In Many Materials To Many Temporary Ends. Raphael Paints Wisdom, Handel Sings It, Phidias Carves It, Shakspeare Writes It, Wren Builds It, Columbus Sails It, Luther Preaches It, Washington Arms It, Watt Mechanizes It. Painting Was Called "silent Poetry," And Poetry "speaking Painting." The Laws Of Each Art Are Convertible Into The Laws Of Every Other.

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

Read Proudly--put The Duty Of Being Read Invariably On The Author. If He Is Not Read, Whose Fault Is It? I Am Quite Ready To Be Charmed, But I Shall Not Make-believe I Am Charmed.

Pride Ruined The Angels, Their Shame Them Restores; And The Joy That Is Sweetest Lurks In Stings Of Remorse.

It Is In Bad Taste," Is The Most Formidable Word An Englishman Can Pronounce.

I Wish To Speak With All Respect Of Persons, But Sometimes I Must Pinch Myself To Keep Awake, And Preserve The Due Decorum. They Melt So Fast Into Each Other, That They Are Like Grass And Trees, And It Needs An Effort To Treat Them As Individuals.

If You Criticize A Fine Genius, The Odds Are That You Are Out Of Your Reckoning, And, Instead Of The Poet, Are Censuring Your Owncaricature Of Him.

The Intellect Is Vagabond, And Our System Of Education Fosters Restlessness. Our Minds Travel When Our Bodies Are Forced To Stay At Home. We Imitate; And What Is Imitation But The Travelling Of The Mind?

Make Your Own Bible. Select And Collect All The Words And Sentences That In All Your Readings Have Been To You Like The Blast Of A Trumpet.

One Of The Most Wonderful Things In Nature Is A Glance Of The Eye; It Transcends Speech; It Is The Bodily Symbol Of Identity.

But It Is Impossible That The Creative Power Should Exclude Itself. Into Every Intelligence There Is A Door Which Is Never Closed,through Which The Creator Passes.

The Oversoul Is Before Time, And Time, Father Of All Else, Is One Of His Children.

Give Me Truths For I Am Weary Of The Surfaces.

Heaven Often Protects Valuable Souls Charged With Great Secrets, Great Ideas, By Long Shutting Them Up With Their Own Thoughts.

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.

Time Dissipates To Shining Ether The Solid Angularity Of Facts.

Of All Wit's Uses, The Main One Is To Live Well With Who Has None.

There Is No God Dare Wrong A Worm.

There Is No God

Every Spirit Makes Its House, And We Can Give A Shrewd Guess From The House To The Inhabitant.

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

Savages Cling To A Local God Of One Tribe Or Town. The Broad Ethics Of Jesus Were Quickly Narrowed To Village Theologies, Which Preach An Election Or Favoritism.

The Frenchman Invented The Ruffle; The Englishman Added The Shirt.

In The Moment When You Make The Least Petition To God, Though It Be But A Silent Wish That He May Approve You, Or Add One Moment To Your Life,--do You Not, In The Very Act, Necessarily Exclude All Other Beings From Your Thought? In That Act, The Soul Stands Alone With God, And Jesus Is No More Present To Your Mind Than Your Brother Or Your Child.

Thought Makes Everything Fit For Use.

Colleges, In Like Manner, Have Their Indispensable Office,--to Teach Elements. But They Can Only Highly Serve Us, When They Aim Not To Drill, But To Create; When They Gather From Far Every Ray Of Various Genius To Their Hospitable Halls, And, By The Concentrated Fires, Set The Hearts Of Their Youth On Flame.

One Single Idea May Have Greater Weight Than All The Men, Animals, And Machines For A Century.

Was Never Secret History But Birds Tell It In The Bowers.

The Sanity Of Society Is A Balance Of A Thousand Insanity's.

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

Every Word Was Once A Poem.

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

By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote.

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.

Physical Force Has No Value, Where There Is Nothing Else. Snow In Snow-banks, Fire In Volcanoes And Solfataras Is Cheap. The Luxury Of Ice Is In Tropical Countries, And Midsummer Days. The Luxury Of Fire Is, To Have A Little On Our Hearth; And Of Electricity, Not The Volleys Of The Charged Cloud, But The Manageable Stream On The Battery-wires. So Of Spirit, Or Energy; The Rests Or Remains Of It In The Civil And Moral Man, Are Worth All The Cannibals In The Pacific.

Infancy Conforms To Nobody: All Conform To It, So That One Babe Commonly Makes Four Or Five Out Of The Adults Who Prattle And Play To It.

Duty Grows Everywhere--like Children, Like Grass.

To Be Rich Is To Have A Ticket Of Admission To The Masterworks And Chief Men Of Each Race. It Is To Have The Sea, By Voyaging; To Visit The Mountains, Niagara, The Nile, The Desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople: To See Galleries, Libraries, Arsenals, Manufactories.

Everything Has Its Price - And If That Price Is Not Paid, Not That Thing But Something Else Is Obtained... It Is Impossible To Get Anything Without This Price.

To Be Great, You Must Be Misunderstood

If The Colleges Were Better, If They Had The Power Of Imparting Valuable Thought, Creative Principles, Truths Which Become Powers, Thoughts Which Become Talents, - If They Could Cause That A Mind Not Profound Should Become Profound, - We Should All Rush To Their Gates: Instead Of Contriving Inducements To Draw Students, You Would Need To Set Police At The Gates To Keep Order In The In-rushing Multitude.

[t]omorrow Is A New Day. You Shall Begin It Well & Serenely, & With Too High A Spirit To Be Cumbered With Your Old Nonsense. This Day ... Is Too Dear With Its Hopes & Invitations To Waste A Moment On The Rotten Yesterdays.

Nor Sequent Centuries Could Hit Orbit And Sum Of Shakspeare's Wit. The Men Who Lived With Him Became Poets, For The Air Was Fame.

Sickness Is Poor-spirited, And Cannot Serve Anyone; It Must Husband Its Resources To Live. But Health Or Fullness Answers Its Own Ends, And Has To Spare, Runs Over, And Inundates The Neighborhoods And Creeks Of Other Men's Necessities.

A Man Cannot Speak But He Judges Himself. With His Will Or Against His Will He Draws His Portrait To The Eye Of His Companions By Every Word. Every Opinion Reacts On Him Who Utters It. It Is A Threadball Thrown At A Mark, But The Other End Remains On The Thrower

A Man Cannot Utter Two Or Three Sentences Without Disclosing To Intelligent Ears Precisely Where He Stands In Life And Thought, Whether In The Kingdom Of The Senses And The Understanding, Or In That Of Ideas And Imagination, Or In The Realm Of Intuitions And Duty.

What Would Be The Use Of Immortality To A Person Who Cannot Use Well A Half An Hour?

Truth Is Handsomer Than The Affectation Of Love. Your Goodness Must Have Some Edge To It, Else It Is None.

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

All Public Facts Are To Be Individualized, All Private Facts Are To Be Generalized.

Wherever Snow Falls, Or Water Flows, Or Birds Fly, Wherever Day And Night Meet In Twilight, Wherever The Blue Heaven Is Hung By Clouds, Or Sown With Stars, Wherever Are Forms With Transparent Boundaries, Wherever Are Outlets Into Celestial Space, Wherever Is Danger, And Awe, And Love, There Is Beauty, Plenteous As Rain, Shed For Thee, And Though Thou Shouldest Walk The World Over, Thou Shalt Not Be Able To Find A Condition Inopportune Or Ignoble.

Let The Reader Find That He Cannot Afford To Omit Any Line Of Your Writing Because You You Have Omitted Every Word That He Can Spare.

Each Man Has His Own Vocation; His Talent Is His Call. There Is One Direction In Which All Space Is Open To Him.

Poetry Must Be As New As Foam And As Old As The Rock.

Each Particle Is A Microcosm, And Faithfully Renders The Likeness Of The World.

There Is No True Orator Who Is Not A Hero.

A Man Is Usually More Careful Of His Money Than He Is Of His Principles.

Who Shall Set A Limit To The Influence Of A Human Being?

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

There Will Be An Agreement In Whatever Variety Of Actions, So They Be Each Honest And Natural In Their Hour. For Of One Will, The Actions Will Be Harmonious, However Unlike They Seem. These Varieties Are Lost Sight Of At A Little Distance, At A Little Height Of Thought. One Tendency Unites Them All. The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zigzag Line Of A Hundred Tacks. See The Line From A Sufficient Distance, And It Straightens Itself To The Average Tendency.

In The Greek Cities, It Was Reckoned Profane, That Any Person Should Pretend A Property In A Work Of Art, Which Belonged To All Who Could Behold It.

Trust Thyself: Every Heart Vibrates To That Iron String.

The Manly Part Is To Do With Might And Main What You Can Do.

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

Broader And Deeper We Must Write Our Annals, From An Ethical Reformation, From An Influx Of The Ever New, Ever Sanative Conscience, If We Would Trulier Express Our Central And Wide-related Nature, Instead Of This Old Chronology Of Selfishness And Pride To Which We Have Too Long Lent Our Eyes. Already That Day Exists For Us, Shines In On Us At Unawares, But The Path Of Science And Of Letters Is Not The Way Into Nature. The Idiot, The Indian, The Child, And Unschooled Farmer's Boy, Stand Nearer To The Light By Which Nature Is To Be Read, Than The Dissector Or The Antiquary.

Idealism Sees The World In God. It Beholds The Whole Circle Of Persons And Things, Of Actions And Events, Of Country And Religion,not As Painfully Accumulated, Atom After Atom, Act After Act, In An Aged Creeping Past, But As One Vast Picture, Which God Paints On The Instant Eternity, For The Contemplation Of The Soul.

We Never Touch But At Points.

They Have Seen But Half The Universe Who Never Have Been Shown The House Of Pain.

It Is Not Length Of Life, But Depth Of Life.

Do That Which You Fear To Do, And The Fear Will Die.

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

Action Is With The Scholar Subordinate, But It Is Essential. Without It, He Is Not Yet Man. Without It, Thought Can Never Ripen Into Truth.

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 Attraction And Superiority Of California Are In Its Days. It Has Better Days & More Of Them, Than Any Other Country.

Build Therefore Your Own World.

Sooner Or Later That Which Is Now Life Shall Be Poetry, And Every Fair And Manly Trait Shall Add A Richer Strain To The Song.

Economy Does Not Consist In Saving The Coal, But In Using The Time While It Burns.

Our Age Is Retrospective. It Builds The Sepulchres Of The Fathers. It Writes Biographies, Histories And Criticism.

A Man Cannot Speak But He Judges Himself

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

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

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.

The True Preacher Can Be Known By This, That He Deals Out To The People His Life,--life Passed Through The Fire Of Thought.

A Man Is Reputed To Have Thought And Eloquence; He Cannot, For All That, Say A Word To His Cousin Or His Uncle. They Accuse His Silence With As Much Reason As They Would Blame The Insignificance Of A Dial In The Shade. In The Sun It Will Mark The Hour. Among Those Who Enjoy His Thought, He Will Regain His Tongue.

Wherever There Is Failure, There Is Some Giddiness, Some Superstition About Luck, Some Step Omitted, Which, Nature Never Pardons.

The Piety Of The Hebrew Prophets Purges Their Grossness. The Circumcision Is An Example Of The Power Of Poetry To Raise The Low And Offensive.

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

A Child Is A Curly, Dimpled Lunatic.

The Essence Of Age Is Intellect. Wherever That Appears, We Call It Old.

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.

Never Try To Make Anyone Like You: You Know, And God Knows, That One Of You Is Enough.

Trending Author

Jason Schwartzman

Mikhail Saakashvili

George Matthew Adams

Category