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What I Must Do Is All That Concerns Me, Not What People Think. This Rule,equally Arduous In Actual And Intellectual Life, May Serve For The Whole Distinction Between Greatness And Meanness. It Is The Harder, Because You Will Always Find Those Who Think They Know What Is Your Duty Better Than You Know It. 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.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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What I Must Do

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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What I Must Do Is All That Concerns Me, Not What People Think. This Rule,equally Arduous In Actual And Intellectual Life, May Serve For The Whole Distinction Between Greatness And Meanness. It Is The Harder, Because You Will Always Find Those Who Think They Know What Is Your Duty Better Than You Know It. 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.

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

When We Quarrel, How We Wish We Had Been Blameless.

The Measure Of A Master Is His Success In Bringing All Men Around To His Opinion Twenty Years Later.

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Life Only Avails, Not The Having Lived.

God Screens Us Evermore From Premature Ideas.

Experience Is The Only Teacher, And We Get His Lesson Indifferently In Any School.

Genius Detects Through The Fly, Through The Caterpillar, Through The Grub, Through The Egg, The Constant Individual; Through Countless Individuals The Fixed Species; Through Many Species The Genus; Through All Genera The Steadfast Type; Through All The Kingdoms Of Organized Life The Eternal Unity. Nature Is A Mutable Cloud Which Is Always And Never The Same.

Eyes...they Speak All Languages.

A Man's Wife Has More Power Over Him Than The State Has.

Oxford Is A Little Aristocracy In Itself, Numerous And Dignified Enough To Rank With Other Estates In The Realm; And Where Fame And Secular Promotion Are To Be Had For Study, And In A Direction Which Has The Unanimous Respect Of All Cultivated Nations.

The Rain Comes When The Wind Calls.

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

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

What You Are Comes To You.

Law Of Attraction

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.

Every Man Believes He Has A Greater Possibility.

Crime And Punishment Grow Out Of One Stem. Punishment Is A Fruit That Unsuspected Ripens Within The Flower Of The Pleasure Which Concealed It.

I Know Of No Such Unquestionable Badge And Ensign Of A Sovereign Mind As That Of Tenacity Of Purpose.

The Imitator Dooms Himself To Hopeless Mediocrity. The Inventor Did It Because It Was Natural To Him, And So In Him It Has A Charm. In The Imitator Something Else Is Natural, And He Bereaves Himself Of His Own Beauty, To Come Short Of Another Man's.

To The Poet, To The Philosopher, To The Saint, All Things Are Friendly And Sacred, All Events Profitable, All Days Holy, All Men Divine.

Ah, If The Rich Were Rich As The Poor Fancy Riches.

Give All To Love: Obey Thy Heart; Friends, Kindred, Days, Estate, Good Fame, Plans, Credit, And The Muse,- Nothing Refuse.

Prosperity Is Something The Businessmen Created For Politicians To Take Credit For

Sorrow Looks Back, Worry Looks Around, Faith Looks Up

The Only Prudence In Life Is Concentration.

Focus And Concentration

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

Shakspeare Is The Only Biographer Of Shakspeare; And Even He Can Tell Nothing, Except To The Shakspeare In Us; That Is, To Our Most Apprehensive And Sympathetic Hour.

A Man Passes For That He Is Worth. What He Is Engraves Itself On His Face, On His Form, On His Fortunes, In Letters Of Light. Concealment Avails Him Nothing; Boasting Nothing. There Is Confession In The Glances Of Our Eyes; In Our Smiles; In Salutations; And The Grasp Of Hands.

The Richest Of All Lords Is Use, And Ruddy Health The Loftiest Muse. Live In The Sunshine, Swim The Sea, Drink The Wild Air's Salubrity.

Science Does Not Know Its Debt To Imagination.

The University Must Be Retrospective. The Gale That Gives Direction To The Vanes On All Its Towers Blows Out Of Antiquity.

Where Do We Find Ourselves? In A Series Of Which We Do Not Know The Extremes, And Believe That It Has None. We Wake And Find Ourselves On A Stair; There Are Stairs Below Us, Which We Seem To Have Ascended; There Are Stairs Above Us, Many A One, Which Go Upward And Out Of Sight.

Goodness That Preaches Undoes Itself.

All Life Is An Experiment. Place Yourself In The Middle Of The Stream Of Power And Wisdom Which Animates All Whom It Floats, And You Are Without Effort Impelled To Truth, To Right And A Perfect Contentment. I Wish To Write Such Rhymes As Shall Not Suggest A Restraint, But Contrariwise The Wildest Freedom. Immortality. I Notice That As Soon As Writers Broach This Question They Begin To Quote. I Hate Quotation. Tell Me What You Know.

Dear To Us Are Those Who Love Us... But Dearer Are Those Who Reject Us As Unworthy, For They Add Another Life; They Build A Heaven Before Us Whereof We Had Not Dreamed, And Thereby Supply To Us New Powers Out Of The Recesses Of The Spirit, And Urge Us To New And Unattempted Performances.

Time, Which Shows So Vacant, Indivisible, And Divine In Its Coming, Is Slit And Peddled Into Trifles And Tatters. A Door Is To Bepainted, A Lock To Be Repaired. I Want Wood, Or Oil, Or Meal, Or Salt; The House Smokes, Or I Have A Headache; Then The Tax; And An Affair To Be Transacted With A Man Without Heart Or Brains; And The Stinging Recollection Of An Injurious Or Very Awkward Word,--these Eat Up The Hours.

Do Not Speak Of God Much. After A Very Little Conversation On The Highest Nature, Thought Deserts Us And We Run Into Formalism.

Every Time You Wink The Stars Move.

I Like People Who Can Do Things

Being Perfectly Well-dressed Gives A Feeling Of Tranquillity That Religion Is Powerless To Bestow.

I Wish To Say What I Think And Feel Today, With The Proviso That Tomorrow Perhaps I Shall Contradict It All.

Whoever Is Open, Loyal, True; Of Humane And Affable Demeanour; Honourable Himself, And In His Judgement Of Others; Faithful To His Word As To Law, And Faithful Alike To God And Man....such A Man Is A True Gentleman.

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 Pest Of Society Are The Egotist, They Are Dull And Bright, Sacred And Profane, Course And Fine. It Is A Disease That Like The Flu Falls On All Constitutions.

That Which We Do Not Believe, We Cannot Adequately Say; Even Though We May Repeat The Words Ever So Often.

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?

By The Rude Bridge That Arched The Flood, Their Flag To April's Breeze Unfurled, Here Once The Embattled Farmers Stood, And Fired The Shot Heard Round The World. The Foe Long Since In Silence Slept; Alike The Conqueror Silent Sleeps; And Time The Ruined Bridge Has Swept Down The Dark Stream Which Seaward Creeps. On This Green Bank, By This Soft Stream, We Set To-day A Votive Stone; That Memory May Their Deed Redeem, When, Like Our Sires, Our Sons Are Gone.

Life Is An Ecstasy. Life Is Sweet As Nitrous Oxide.

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In Certain Men Digestion And Sex Absorb The Vital Force, And The Stronger These Are, The Individual Is So Much Weaker. The More Ofthese Drones Perish, The Better For The Hive.

The Most Tedious Of All Discourses Are On The Subject Of The Supreme Being.

The Soul Is The Perceiver And Revealer Of Truth. We Know Truth When We See It, Let Skeptic And Scoffer Say What They Choose.

Genius Is The Naturalist Or Geographer Of The Supersensible Regions, And Draws Their Map; And, By Acquainting Us With New Fields Of Activity, Cools Our Affection For The Old. These Are At Once Accepted As The Reality, Of Which The World We Have Conversed With Is The Show.

If The Single Man Plant Himself Indomitably On His Instincts, And There Abide, The Huge World Will Come Round To Him.

I Think We Must Get Rid Of Slavery Or We Must Get Rid Of Freedom.

Heroism Feels And Never Reasons, And Therefore Is Always Right.

You Cannot See The Mountain Near.

Among The Map Makers Of Each Generation Are The Risk Takers, Those Who See The Opportunities, Seize The Moment And Expand Man's Vision Of The Future

Visions Of The Future

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

Knowledge Is The Knowing That We Cannot Know.

Everything In Our World, Even A Drop Of Dew, Is A Microcosm Of The Universe.

Finish Each Day Before You Begin The Next, And Interpose A Solid Wall Of Sleep Between The Two. This You Cannot Do Without Temperance.

When A Man Becomes A Conformist, He Is Sacrificing The Richness Of Independent Thinking.

In The Presence Of Nature, A Wild Delight Runs Through The Man, In Spite Of Real Sorrows.

The Virtue In Most Request Is Conformity.

When You Were Born You Were Crying And Everyone Else Was Smiling. Live Your Life So At The End, Your're The One Who Is Smiling And Everyone Else Is Crying.

He Cumbers Himself Never About Consequences, About Interests; He Gives An Independent, Genuine Verdict. You Must Court Him: He Does Not Court You. But The Man Is, As It Were, Clapped Into Jail By His Consciousness.

Moller, In His Essay On Architecture, Taught That The Building Which Was Fitted Accurately To Answer Its End Would Turn Out To Be Beautiful, Though Beauty Had Not Been Intended. I Find The Like Unity In Human Structures Rather Virulent And Pervasive.

A Collector Recently Bought At Public Auction, In London, For One Hundred And Fifty-seven Guineas, An Autograph Of Shakespeare; But For Nothing A School-boy Can Read Hamlet And Can Detect Secrets Of Highest Concernment Yet Unpublished Therein.

The Hand That Rounded Peter's Dome, And Groined The Aisles Of Christian Rome, Wrought In A Sad Sincerity; Himself From God He Could Not Free; He Builded Better Than He Knew: The Conscious Stone To Beauty Grew.

Conservatism Makes No Poetry, Breathes No Prayer, Has No Invention; It Is All Memory. Reform Has No Gratitude, No Prudence, No Husbandry.

Politics Is A Deleterious Profession, Like Some Poisonous Handicrafts.

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.

Never Self-possessed, Or Prudent, Love Is All Abandonment.

All That Adam Had, All That Caesar Could, You Have And Can Do.... Build, Therefore, Your Own World.

[gratitude Is] The Cheerfulness Of Wisdom.

Its The Not The Destination, It's The Journey.

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.

Good Nature Is Stronger Than Tomahawks.

The Glance Is Natural Magic. The Mysterious Communication Established Across A House Between Two Entire Strangers, Moves All The Springs Of Wonder. The Communication By The Glance Is In The Greatest Part Not Subject To The Control Of The Will. It Is The Bodily Symbol Of Identity With Nature. We Look Into The Eyes To Know If This Other Form Is Another Self, And The Eyes Will Not Lie, But Make A Faithful Confession What Inhabitant Is There.

Sole And Self-commanded Works, Fears Not Undermining Days, Grows By Decays, And, By The Famous Might That Lurks In Reaction And Recoil, Makes Flames To Freeze, And Ice To Boil.

Solvency Is Maintained By Means Of A National Debt, On The Principle, "if You Will Not Lend Me The Money, How Can I Pay You?"

Immitation Is Suicide.

The Only Sin That We Never Forgive In Each Other Is A Difference In Opinion.

Success To The Strongest, Who Are Always, At Last, The Wisest And Best.

...as There Is No Screen Or Ceiling Between Our Heads And The Infinite Heavens, So Is There No Bar Or Wall In The Soul Where Man, The Effect, Ceases, And God, The Cause, Begins. The Walls Are Taken Away. We Lie Open On One Side To The Deeps Of Spiritual Nature, To The Attributes Of God. Justice We See And Know, Love, Freedom, Power. These Natures No Man Ever Got Above, But They Tower Over Us, And Most In The Moment When Our Interests Tempt Us To Wound Them.

A Great Man Is Always Willing To Be Little.

Free Should Be The Scholar - Free And Brave.

Few People Have Any Next, They Live From Hand To Mouth Without A Plan, And Are Always At The End Of Their Line.

To Give Money To A Sufferer Is Only A Come-off. It Is Only A Postponement Of The Real Payment, A Bribe Paid For Silence, A Creditsystem In Which A Paper Promise To Pay Answers For The Time Instead Of Liquidation. We Owe To Man Higher Succors Than Food And Fire. We Owe To Man.

We Fill The Hands And Nurseries Of Our Children With All Manner Of Dolls, Drums And Horses, Withdrawing Their Eyes From The Plain Face And... Nature, The Sun And Moon, The Animals, The Water And Stones, Which Should Be Their Toys.

Solitary Converse With Nature; For Thence Are Ejaculated Sweet And Dreadful Words Never Uttered In Libraries. Ah! The Spring Days, The Summer Dawns, And October Woods!

In Every Work Of Genius We Recognize Our Own Rejected Thoughts; They Come Back To Us With A Certain Alienated Majesty.

Write It On Your Heart That Every Day Is The Best Day In The Year. No Man Has Learned Anything Rightly, Until He Knows That Every Day Is Doomsday.

Inspirational Life

The Profoundest Thought Or Passion Sleeps As In A Mine, Until An Equal Mind And Heart Finds And Publishes It.

Light Is The First Of Painters. There Is No Object So Foul That Intense Light Will Not Make It Beautiful.

The Book, The College, The School Of Art, The Institution Of Any Kind, Stop With Some Past Utterance Of Genius. . . . They Look Backward And Not Forward. But Genius Looks Forward: The Eyes Of Man Are Set In His Forehead, Not In His Hindhead: Man Hopes: Genius Creates. Whatever Talents May Be, If The Man Create Not, The Pure Efflux Of The Deity Is Not His; - Cinders And Smoke There May Be, But Not Yet Flame.

The Axioms Of Physics Translate The Laws Of Ethics. Thus, "the Whole Is Greater Than Its Part;" "reaction Is Equal To Action;" "the Smallest Weight May Be Made To Lift The Greatest, The Difference Of Weight Being Compensated By Time;" And Many The Like Propositions, Which Have An Ethical As Well As Physical Sense. These Propositions Have A Much More Extensive And Universal Sense When Applied To Human Life, Than When Confined To Technical Use.

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.

When You Have Worn Out Your Shoes, The Strength Of The Show Fiber Has Passed Into Your Body.

There Is Never A Beginning, There Is Never An End, To The Inexplicable Continuity Of This Web Of God, But Always Circular Power Returning Into Itself.

There Is Simply The Rose; It Is Perfect In Every Moment Of Its Existence.

Greatness Once And Forever Has Down With Opinion.

There Comes A Period Of The Imagination To Each--a Later Youth--the Power Of Beauty, The Power Of Looks, Of Poetry.

We Find Delight In The Beauty And Happiness Of Children That Makes The Heart Too Big For The Body.

The Etymologist Finds The Deadest Word To Have Been Once A Brilliant Picture.

The House Is A Castle Which The King Cannot Enter.

The Longest Wave Is Quickly Lost In The Sea.

There Are Only Ten Minutes In The Life Of A Pear When It Is Perfect To Eat.

For, The Advantages Which Fashion Values, Are Plants Which Thrive In Very Confined Localities, In A Few Streets, Namely. Out Of This Precinct, They Go For Nothing; Are Of No Use In The Farm, In The Forest, In The Market, In War, In The Nuptial Society, In The Literary Or Scientific Circle, At Sea, In Friendship, In The Heaven Of Thought Or Virtue.

Private, Accidental, Confidential Conversation Breeds Thought. Clubs Produce Oftener Words.

If We Walk In The Woods, We Must Feed Mosquitoes.

Man Is The Dwarf Of Himself.

Consistency Is The Bugbear That Frightens Little Minds.

Sometimes A Scream Is Better Than A Thesis.

Riding A Horse Is Not A Gentle Hobby, To Be Picked Up And Laid Down Like A Game Of Solitaire. It Is A Grand Passion. It Seizes A Person Whole And Once It Has Done So, He/she Will Have To Accept That His Life Will Be Radically Changed.

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

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

The Influence Of Fine Scenery, The Presence Of Mountains, Appeases Our Irritations And Elevates Our Friendships.

A Work Of Art Is An Abstract Or Epitome Of The World. It Is The Result Or Expression Of Nature, In Miniature. For, Although The Works Of Nature Are Innumerable And All Different, The Result Or The Expression Of Them All Is Similar And Single.

When He Is Pushed, Tormented, Defeated, He Has A Chance To Learn Something; He Has Been Put On His Wits, On His Manhood; He Has Gained Facts; Learns His Ignorance; Is Cured Of The Insanity Of Conceit; Has Got Moderation And Real Skill.

The Secret Of The World Is The Tie Between Person And Event. Person Makes Event And Event Person.

Our Spontaneous Action Is Always The Best. You Cannot, With Your Best Deliberation And Heed, Come So Close To Any Question As Your Spontaneous Glance Shall Bring You.

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.

We Walk Alone In The World. Friends, Such As We Desire, Are Dreams And Fables.

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

The Powers Of The Soul Are Commensurate With Its Needs.

Valor Consists In The Power Of Self Recovery.

In Spite Of Virtue And The Muse, Nemesis Will Have Her Dues, And All Our Struggles And Our Toils Tighter Wind The Giant Coils.

The Mystic Must Be Steadily Told,-all That You Say Is Just As True Without The Tedious Use Of That Symbol As With It. Let Us Have A Little Algebra, Instead Of This Trite Rhetoric,-universal Signs, Instead Of These Village Symbols,-and We Shall Both Be Gainers. The History Of Hierarchies Seems To Show That All Religious Error Consisted In Making The Symbol Too Stark And Solid, And Was At Last Nothing But An Excess Of The Organ Of Language.

We Must Be Our Own Before We Can Be Another's.

So Use All That Is Called Fortune. Most Men Gamble With Her, And Gain All, And Lose All, As Her Wheel Rolls. But Do Thou Leave As Unlawful These Winnings, And Deal With Cause And Effect, The Chancellors Of God.

What New Thoughts Are Suggested By Seeing A Face Of Country Quite Familiar, In The Rapid Movement Of The Rail-road Car!

There Are Two Laws Discretenot Reconciled,law For Man, And Law For Thing.

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

In Sculpture Did Ever Anybody Call The Apollo A Fancy Piece? Or Say Of The Laocoon How It Might Be Made Different? A Masterpiece Of Art Has In The Mind A Fixed Place In The Chain Of Being, As Much As A Plant Or A Crystal.

A Poem, A Sentence, Causes Us To See Ourselves. I Be, And I See My Being, At The Same Time.

The Moral Equalizes All; Enriches, Empowers All. It Is The Coin Which Buys All, And Which All Find In Their Pocket. Under The Whipof The Driver, The Slave Shall Feel His Equality With Saints And Heroes.

Housekeeping Is Not Beautiful; It Cheers And Raises Neither The Husband, The Wife, Nor The Child; Neither The Host Nor The Guest;it Oppresses Women. A House Kept To The End Of Prudence Is Laborious Without Joy; A House Kept To The End Of Display Is Impossible To All But A Few Women, And Their Success Is Dearly Bought.

It Is Plain That There Is No Separate Essence Called Courage, No Cup Or Cell In The Brain, No Vessel In The Heart Containing Drops Or Atoms That Make Or Give This Virtue; But It Is The Right Or Healthy State Of Every Man, When He Is Free To Do That Which Is Constitutional To Him To Do.

In The Vaunted Works Of Art, The Master-stroke Is Nature's Part.

The Horseman Serves The Horse, The Neat-herd Serves The Neat, The Merchant Serves The Purse, The Eater Serves His Meat; 'tis The Day Of The Chattel, Web To Weave, And Corn To Grind, Things Are In The Saddle, And Ride Mankind.

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

Cause And Effect, Means And Ends, Seed And Fruit Cannot Be Severed; For The Effect Already Blooms In The Cause, The End Preexists In The Means, The Fruit In The Seed

If The Stars Should Appear But One Night Every Thousand Years How Man Would Marvel And Stare.

A Sympathetic Person Is Placed In The Dilemma Of A Swimmer Among Drowning Men, Who All Catch At Him, And If He Gives So Much As A Leg Or A Finger, They Will Drown Him.

An Eminent Teacher Of Girls Said, "the Idea Of A Girl's Education, Is, Whatever Qualifies Them For Going To Europe.

Thy Dangerous Glances Make Women Of Men; New-born, We Are Melting Into Nature Again.

When The Master Of The Universe Has Points To Carry In His Government He Impresses His Will In The Structure Of Minds.

Tis The Good Reader That Makes The Good Book.

Sorrow Makes Us All Children Again.

We Prize Books, And They Prize Them Most Who Are Themselves Wise.

He Thought It Happier To Be Dead, To Die For Beauty, Than Live For Bread

Life Is Not Intellectual Or Critical, But Sturdy. Its Chief Good Is For Well-mixed People Who Can Enjoy What They Find, Without Question.

Never Lose An Opportunity Of Seeing Anything Beautiful, For Beauty Is God's Handwriting.

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.

The Arts And Inventions Of Each Period Are Only Its Costume, And Do Not Invigorate Men.

Everything Intercepts Us From Ourselves.

Work And Acquire, And Thou Hast Chained The Wheel Of Chance.

So Each Man, Like Each Plant, Has His Parasites. A Strong, Astringent, Bilious Nature Has More Truculent Enemies Than The Slugs And Moths That Fret My Leaves. Such A One Has Curculios, Borers, Knife-worms; A Swindler Ate Him First, Then A Client, Then A Quack, Then Smooth, Plausible Gentlemen, Bitter And Selfish As Moloch.

There Are Eyes, To Be Sure, That Give No More Admission Into The Man Than Blueberries.

All Is A Riddle, And The Key To A Riddle...is Another Riddle.

A Judge May Be A Farmer; But He Is Not To Geld His Own Pigs.

Everything In Nature Contains All The Powers Of Nature. Everything Is Made Of One Hidden Stuff.

It Seems To Be A Rule Of Wisdom Never To Rely On Memory Alone.

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

No Man Should Travel Until He Has Learned The Language Of The Country He Visits. Otherwise He Voluntarily Makes Himself A Great Baby - So Helpless And So Ridiculous.

There Is A Blessed Necessity By Which The Interest Of Men Is Always Driving Them To The Right; And, Again, Making All Crime Mean And Ugly.

Go Face The Fire At Sea, Or The Cholera In Your Friend's House, Or The Burglar In Your Own, Or What Danger Lies In The Way Of Duty, Knowing You Are Guarded By The Cherubim Of Destiny. If You Believe In Fate To Your Harm, Believe It, At Least, For Your Good.

The Eloquent Man Is He Who Is No Beautiful Speaker, But Who Is Inwardly And Desperately Drunk With A Certain Belief.

Virtue Alone Is Sweet Society, It Keeps The Key To All Heroic Hearts, And Opens You A Welcome In Them All.

Society Never Advances. It Recedes As Fast On One Side As It Gains On The Other. It Undergoes Continual Changes: It Is Barbarous, It Is Civilized, It Is Rich, It Is Scientific; But This Change Is Not Amelioration. For Every Thing That Is Given, Something Else Is Taken. Society Acquires New Arts And Loses Old Instincts.

The Human Heart Concerns Us More Than The Poring Into Microscopes, And Is Larger Than Can Be Measured By The Pompous Figures Of The Astronomer.

If You Want To Be Great And Successful, Choose People Who Are Great And Successful And Walk Side By Side With Them.

But Also The Constituency Determines The Vote Of The Representative. He Is Not Only Representative, But Participant. Like Can Onlybe Known By Like. The Reason Why He Knows About Them Is, That He Is Of Them; He Has Just Come Out Of Nature, Or From Being A Part Of The Thing.

To Accomplish Excellence Or Anything Outstanding, You Must Listen To That Whisper Which Is Heard By You Alone.

Circles, Like The Soul, Are Neverending And Turn Round And Round Without A Stop.

Society Is Infected With Rude, Cynical, Restless, And Frivolous Persons Who Prey Upon The Rest, And Whom No Public Opinion Concentrated Into Good Manners, Forms Accepted By The Sense Of All, Can Reach; The Contradictors And Railers At Public And Private Tables, Who Are Like Terriers, Who Conceive It The Duty Of A Dog Of Honor To Growl At Any Passer-by, And Do The Honors Of The House By Barking Him Out Of Sight.

We Aim Above The Mark, To Hit The Mark. Every Act Hath Some Falsehood Of Exaggeration In It.

Men Are Born To Write. The Gardener Saves Every Slip, And Seed, And Peach-stone: His Vocation Is To Be A Planter Of Plants. Not Less Does The Writer Attend His Affair. Whatever He Beholds Or Experiences, Comes To Him As A Model, And Sits For Its Picture. He Counts It All Nonsense That They Say, That Some Things Are Undescribable. He Believes That All That Can Be Thought Can Be Written, First Or Last; And He Would Report The Holy Ghost, Or Attempt It.

Our Strength Grows Out Of Our Weakness.

We Resent All Criticism Which Denies Us Anything That Lies In Our Line Of Advance.

Do Your Thing, And I Shall Know You.

The First Steps In Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoology, (those First Steps Which The Farmer, The Hunter, And The Sailor Take,) Teach That Nature's Dice Are Always Loaded; That In Her Heaps And Rubbish Are Concealed Sure And Useful Results.

Men Of Sense Esteem Wealth To Be The Assimilation Of Nature To Themselves, The Converting Of The Sap And Juices Of The Planet To The Incarnation And Nutriment Of Their Design.

The Beautiful Rests On The Foundations Of The Necessary.

The Highest Beauty Should Be Plain Set.

I Count Him A Great Man Who Inhabits A Higher Sphere Of Thought, Into Which Other Men Rise With Labor And Difficulty; He Has But To Open His Eyes To See Things In A True Light, And In Large Relations; Whilst They Must Make Painful Corrections, And Keep A Vigilant Eye On Many Sources Of Error.

Worst, When This Sensualism Intrudes Into The Education Of Young Women, And Withers The Hope And Affection Of Human Nature, By Teaching That Marriage Signifies Nothing But A Housewife's Thrift, And That Woman's Life Has No Other Aim.

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 Time Will Come When The Evil Forms We Have Known Can No More Be Organized. Man's Culture Can Spare Nothing, Wants All Material. He Is To Convert All Impediments Into Instruments, All Enemies Into Power.

Dare To Love God Without Mediator Or Veil.

Let The Realist Not Mind Appearances. Let Him Delegate To Others The Costly Courtesies And Decorations Of Social Life. The Virtuesare Economists, But Some Of The Vices Are Also. Thus, Next To Humility, I Have Noticed That Pride Is A Pretty Good Husband. A Good Pride Is, As I Reckon It, Worth From Five Hundred To Fifteen Hundred A Year.

He That Writes To Himself Writes To An Eternal Public.

Labor Is God's Education.

Travel Is A Fools Paradise.

Every Burned Book Or House Enlightens The World; Every Suppressed Or Expunged Word Reverberates Through The Earth From Side To Side.

O Day Of Days When We Can Read! The Reader And The Book, Either Without The Other Is Naught.

The Regular Course Of Studies, The Years Of Academical And Professional Education, Have Not Yielded Me Better Facts Than Some Idle Books Under The Bench At The Latin School.

In The First Place, All Books That Get Fairly Into The Vital Air Of The World Were Written By The Successful Class, By The Affirming And Advancing Class, Who Utter What Tens Of Thousands Feel Though They Cannot Say.

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