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When Its Errands Are Noble And Adequate, A Steamboat Bridging The Atlantic Between Old And New England, And Arriving At Its Ports With The Punctuality Of A Planet, Is A Step Of Man Into Harmony With Nature.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When Its Errands Are

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When Its Errands Are Noble And Adequate, A Steamboat Bridging The Atlantic Between Old And New England, And Arriving At Its Ports With The Punctuality Of A Planet, Is A Step Of Man Into Harmony With Nature.

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Instead Of Making Christianity A Vehicle Of Truth, You Make Truth Only A Horse For Christianity.

Men Are Conservatives When They Are Least Vigorous, Or When They Are Most Luxurious. They Are Conservatives After Dinner, Or Before Taking Their Rest; When They Are Sick Or Aged. In The Morning, Or When Their Intellect Or Their Conscience Has Been Aroused, When They Hear Music, Or When They Read Poetry, They Are Radicals.

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When The Eyes Say One Thing, And The Tongue Another, A Practiced Man Relies On The Language Of The First.

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The Good Rain, Like A Bad Preacher, Does Not Know When To Leave Off.

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A Child Is A Curly, Dimpled Lunatic.

We Are Reformers In The Spring And Summer, But In Autumn We Stand By The Old. Reformers In The Morning, And Conservers At Night.

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The Poet, The Painter, The Sculptor, The Musican, The Architect, Seek Each To Concentrate This Radiance Of The World On One Point, And Each In His Several Work To Satisfy The Love Of Beauty Which Stimulates Him To Produce.

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Skepticism Is Unbelief In Cause And Effect.

Cause And Effect

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Art Is The Need To Create; But In Its Essence, Immense And Universal, It Is Impatient Of Working With Lame Or Tied Hands, And Of Making Cripples And Monsters, Such As All Pictures And Statues Are. Nothing Less Than The Creation Of Man And Nature Is Its End.

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We Aim Above The Mark To Hit The Mark.

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Enthusiasm For Life

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Christianity Taught The Capacity, The Element, To Love The All-perfect Without A Stingy Bargain For Personal Happiness. It Taught That To Love Him Was Happiness;--to Love Him In Others' Virtues.

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.

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Shall We Then Judge A Country By The Majority, Or By The Minority? By The Minority, Surely. 'tis Pedantry To Estimate Nations By The Census, Or By Square Miles Of Land, Or Other Than By Their Importance To The Mind Of The Time.

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No Man Thoroughly Understands A Truth Until He Has Contended Against It.

The Possibility Of Interpretation Lies In The Identity Of The Observer With The Observed. Each Material Thing Has Its Celestial Side; Has Its Translation, Through Humanity, Into The Spiritual And Necessary Sphere, Where It Plays A Part As Indestructible As Any Other.

Be A Gift And A Benediction.

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We Ought To Be Cautious In Taking Even The Best Ascertained Opinions And Practices Of The Primitive Church For Our Own. If It Could Be Satisfactorily Shown That They Esteemed It Authorized And Transmitted Forever, That Does Not Settle The Question For Us. We Know How Inveterately They Were Attached To Their Jewish Prejudices, And How Often Even The Influence Of Christ Failed To Enlarge Their Views. On Every Other Subject Succeeding Times Have Learned To Form A Judgement More In Accordance With The Spirit Of Christianity Than Was The Practice Of The Early Ages.

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Build, Therefore, Your Own World. As Fast As You Conform Your Life To The Pure Idea In Your Mind, That Will Unfold It's Great Proportions.

Nothing Can Be Preserved That Is Not Good.

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All Things Are Moral. That Soul, Which Within Us Is A Sentiment, Outside Of Us Is A Law. We Feel Its Inspiration; Out There In History We Can See Its Fatal Strength.

A Person Seldom Falls Sick But The Bystanders Are Animated With A Faint Hope That He Will Die.

As Soon As The Man Is At One With God, He Will Not Beg. He Will Then See Prayer In All Action.

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

Whatever Appeals To The Imagination, By Transcending The Ordinary Limits Of Human Ability, Wonderfully Encourages And Liberates Us.

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Good Writing Is A Kind Of Skating Which Carries Off The Performer Where He Would Not Go, And Is Only Right Admirable When To All Its Beauty And Speed A Subserviency To The Will, Like That Of Walking, Is Added.

Every Man Is A Quotation From All His Ancestors.

There Is No Country In Which So Absolute A Homage Is Paid To Wealth. In America There Is A Touch Of Shame When A Man Exhibits Theevidences Of Large Property, As If After All It Needed Apology. But The Englishman Has Pure Pride In His Wealth, And Esteems It A Final Certificate. A Coarse Logic Rules Throughout All English Souls: If You Have Merit, Can You Not Show It By Your Good Clothes And Coach And Horses?

The Moment The Doctrine Of The Immortality Is Separately Taught, Man Is Already Fallen. In The Flowing Of Love, In The Adoration Of Humility, There Is No Question Of Continuance. No Inspired Man Ever Asks This Question, Or Condescends To These Evidences. For The Soul Is True To Itself, And The Man In Whom It Is Shed Abroad Cannot Wander From The Present, Which Is Infinite, To A Future Which Would Be Finite.

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

A Man's Power To Connect His Thought With Its Proper Symbol, And So To Utter It, Depends On The Simplicity Of His Character, That Is, Upon His Love Of Truth, And His Desire To Communicate It Without Loss.

There Is No God Dare Wrong A Worm.

There Is No God

Our Moods Do Not Believe In Each Other.

Do Not Fear To Put Novels Into The Hands Of Young People As An Occasional Holiday Experiment, But Above All, Good Poetry In All Kinds,--epic, Tragedy, Lyric. If We Can Touch The Imagination, We Serve Them; They Will Never Forget It.

Now Every One Must Do After His Kind, Be He Asp Or Angel, And These Must.

Every Sentence Spoken By Napoleon, And Every Line Of His Writing, Deserves Reading, As It Is The Sense Of France.

If I Am The Devil's Child, I Will Live Then, By The Devil.

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

A Beautiful Woman Is A Picture Which Drives All Beholders Nobly Mad.

Every Mind Has A New Compass, A New Direction Of Its Own, Differencing Its Genius And Aim From Every Other Mind.--we Call This Specialty The Bias Of Each Individual. And None Of Us Will Ever Accomplish Anything Excellent Or Commanding Except When He Listens To This Whisper Which Is Heard By Him Alone.

There Is In Nature A Parallel Unity Which Corresponds To The Unity In The Mind And Makes It Available. This Methodizing Mind Meets No Resistance In Its Attempts. The Scattered Blocks, With Which It Strives To Form A Symmetrical Structure, Fit. This Design Following After Finds With Joy That Like Design Went Before. Not Only Man Puts Things In A Row, But Things Belong In A Row.

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.

You Cannot Sincerely Try To Help Another Without Helping Yourself

Delicious Is A Just And Firm Encounter Of Two In A Thought, In A Feeling.

The Writer, Like A Priest, Must Be Exempted From Secular Labor. His Work Needs A Frolic Health; He Must Be At The Top Of His Condition.

A Sublime Hope Cheers Ever The Faithful Heart, That Elsewhere, In Other Regions Of The Universal Powers, Souls Are Now Acting, Enduring And Daring, Which Can Love Us, And Which We Can Love.

You Cannot Kindle A Fire In Any Other Heart Until It Is Burning In Your Own.

Let A Man Then Know His Worth And Keep Things Under His Feet.

I Consider Theology To Be The Rhetoric Of Morals.

The Reality Is More Excellent Than The Report.

Wild Liberty Develops Iron Conscience. Want Of Liberty, By Strengthening Law And Decorum, Stupefies Conscience.

Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds.

A Friend Is A Person Who Goes Around Saying Nice Things About You Behind Your Back.

Cute Friendship

Behind Your Back

Few People Know How To Take A Walk. The Qualifications Are Endurance, Plain Clothes, Old Shoes, An Eye For Nature, Good Humor, Vast Curiosity, Good Speech, Good Silence And Nothing Too Much.

Happy Is The Hearing Man; Unhappy The Speaking Man.

Skepticism Is Unbelief In Cause And Effect. A Man Does Not See, That, As He Eats, So He Thinks: As He Deals, So He Is, And So He Appears; He Does Not See That His Son Is The Son Of His Thoughts And Of His Actions; That Fortunes Are Not Exceptions But Fruits; That Relation And Connection Are Not Somewhere And Sometimes, But Everywhere And Always; No Miscellany, No Exemption, No Anomaly,--but Method, And An Even Web; And What Comes Out, That Was Put In.

For All Men Live By Truth, And Stand In Need Of Expression. In Love, In Art, In Avarice, In Politics, In Labor, In Games, We Study To Utter Our Painful Secret. The Man Is Only Half Himself, The Other Half Is His Expression.

When A Resolute Young Fellow Steps Up To The Great Bully, The World, And Takes Him Boldly By The Beard, He Is Often Surprised To Find It Comes Off In His Hand, And That It Was Only Tied On To Scare Away The Timid Adventurers.

The World Is Filled With The Proverbs And Acts And Winkings Of A Base Prudence, Which Is A Devotion To Matter, As If We Possessedno Other Faculties Than The Palate, The Nose, The Touch, The Eye And Ear; A Prudence Which Adores The Rule Of Three, Which Never Subscribes, Which Never Gives, Which Seldom Lends, And Asks But One Question Of Any Project,--will It Bake Bread?

Cupid Is A Casuist, A Mystic, And A Cabalist,-- Can Your Lurking Thought Surprise, And Interpret Your Device, . . . . All Things Wait For And Divine Him,-- How Shall I Dare To Malign Him?

Every Word Was Once A Poem. Every New Relation Is A New Word.

Other Men Are Lenses Through Which We Read Our Own Minds. Each Man Seeks Those Of Different Quality From His Own, And Such As Are Good Of Their Kind; That Is, He Seeks Other Men, And The Rest.

I Like To Have A Person's Knowledge Comprehend More Than One Class Of Topics, One Row Of Shelves. I Like A Person Who Likes To See A Fine Barn As Well As A Good Tragedy.

Who Is He That Shall Control Me? Why May Not I Act And Speak And Write And Think With Entire Freedom? What Am I To The Universe, Or, The Unvierse, What Is It To Me? Who Hath Forged The Chains Of Wrong And Right, Of Opinion And Custom? And Must I Wear Them?

For All Symbols Are Fluxional; All Language Is Vehicular And Transitive, And Is Good, As Ferries And Horses Are, For Conveyance, Not As Farms And Houses Are, For Homestead.

There Is A Tendency In Things To Right Themselves, And The War Or Revolution Or Bankruptcy That Shatters Rotten System, Allows Things To Take A New And Natural Order.

Who Looks Upon A River In A Meditative Hour And Is Not Reminded Of The Flux Of All Things?

Open The Doors Of Opportunity To Talent And Virtue And They Will Do Themselves Justice, And Property Will Not Be In Bad Hands.

The Primary Wisdom Is Intuition.

Of Immortality, The Soul, When Well Employed, Is Incurious. It Is So Well, That It Is Sure That It Will Be Well. It Asks No Questions Of The Supreme Power.

The Prayer Of The Farmer Kneeling In His Field To Weed It, The Prayer Of The Rower Kneeling With The Stroke Of His Oar, Are True Prayers Heard Throughout Nature.

The Secret Of Success In Society Is A Certain Heartiness And Sympathy. A Man Who Is Not Happy In Company, Cannot Find Any Word In His Memory That Will Fit The Occasion; All His Information Is A Little Impertinent. A Man Who Is Happy There, Finds In Every Turn Of The Conversation Occasions For The Introduction Of What He Has To Say. The Favorites Of Society Are Able Men, And Of More Spirit Than Wit, Who Have No Uncomfortable Egotism, But Who Exactly Fill The Hour And The Company, Contended And Contenting.

When Nature Removes A Great Man, People Explore The Horizon For A Successor; But None Comes, And None Will. His Class Is Extinguished With Him. In Some Other And Quite Different Field, The Next Man Will Appear.

Whoever Fights, Whoever Falls, Justice Conquers Evermore

In The Morning A Man Walks With His Whole Body; In The Evening, Only With His Legs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals And Miscellaneous Notebooks Greek Architecture Is The Perfect Flowering Of Geometry.

But We Need Not Fear That We Can Lose Any Thing By The Progress Of The Soul. The Soul May Be Trusted To The End.

A Man In The View Of Absolute Goodness, Adores, With Total Humility. Every Step Downward, Is A Step Upward. The Man Who Renounceshimself, Comes To Himself.

Things Have Their Laws As Well As Men, And Things Refuse To Be Trifled With.

The Soul Is The Perceiver And The Revealer Of Truth.

The Reliance On Authority Measures The Decline Of Religion, The Withdrawal Of The Soul.

The Reverence For The Scriptures Is An Element Of Civilization, For Thus Has The History Of The World Been Preserved, And Is Preserved.

The Religions We Call False Were Once True.

The World Is His Who Can See Through Its Pretension. What Deafness, What Stone-blind Custom, What Overgrown Error You Behold, Is There Only By Sufferance,--by Your Sufferance. See It To Be A Lie, And You Have Already Dealt It Its Mortal Blow.

The Greatest Delight The Fields And Woods Minister Is The Suggestion Of An Occult Relation Between Man And The Vegetable. I Am Not Alone And Unacknowledged. They Nod To Me And I To Them.

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?

Live, Let Live, And Help Live

It Is About Your Outlook Towards Life. You Can Either Regret Or Rejoice.

Fear, Craft And Avarice Cannot Rear A State.

The Genius Is A Genius By The First Look He Casts On Any Object. Is His Eye Creative? Does He Not Rest In Angles And Colors, But Beholds The Design,--he Will Presently Undervalue The Actual Object.

The Modernness Of All Good Books Seems To Give Men An Existence As Wide As Man.

What We Do Not Call Education Is More Precious Than That Which We Call So. We Form No Guess, At The Time Of Receiving A Thought, Of Its Comparative Value. And Education Often Wastes Its Effort In Attempts To Thwart And Balk This Natural Magnetism, Which Is Sure To Select What Belongs To It.

All My Hurts My Garden Spade Can Heal.

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

Divine Persons Are Character Born, Or, To Borrow A Phrase From Napoleon, They Are Victory Organized.

Dreams Have A Poetic Integrity And Truth. This Limbo And Dust-hole Of Thought Is Presided Over By A Certain Reason, Too.

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.

The Soul Is Not Born; It Does Not Die; It Was Not Produced From Anyone Unborn, Eternal, It Is Not Slain, Though The Body Is Slain.

The Measure Of Action Is The Sentiment From Which It Proceeds. The Greatest Action May Easily Be One Of The Most Private Circumstance.

The American Who Has Been Confined, In His Own Country, To The Sight Of Buildings Designed After Foreign Models, Is Surprised On Entering York Minster Or St. Peter's At Rome, By The Feeling That These Structures Are Imitations Also,--faint Copies Of An Invisible Archetype.

There Is No Man Of Nature's Worth In The Circle Of The Earth.

A Great Man Scarcely Knows How He Dines, How He Dresses; But Without Railing Or Precision, His Living Is Natural And Poetic.

There Is Ever A Slight Suspicion Of The Burlesque About Earnest Good Men.

All Successful Men Have Agreed In One Thing -- They Were Causationists. They Believed That Things Went Not By Luck, But By Law; That There Was Not A Weak Or A Cracked Link In The Chain That Joins The First And Last Of Things.

I Hope In These Days We Have Heard The Last Of Conformity And Consistency. Let The Words Be Gazetted And Ridiculous Henceforward.instead Of The Gong For Dinner, Let Us Hear A Whistle From The Spartan Fife.

Finish Each Day And Be Done With It. You Have Done What You Could. Some Blunders And Absurdities No Doubt Crept In; Forget Them As Soon As You Can. Tomorrow Is A New Day; Begin It Well And Serenely And With Too High A Spirit To Be Encumbered With Your Old Nonsense.

In Every Situation Do The Thing You Fear. If You Do The Thing You Fear, The Death Of Fear Is Certain.

With The Past, I Have Nothing To Do; Nor With The Future. I Live Now.

We Imperatively Require A Perception Of And A Homage To Beauty In Our Companions. Other Virtues Are In Request In The Field And Workyard, But A Certain Degree Of Taste Is Not To Be Spared In Those We Sit With.

The Only Sin Is Limitation. As Soon As You Once Come Up With A Man's Limitations, It Is All Over With Him. Has He Talents? Has Heenterprise? Has He Knowledge? It Boots Not. Infinitely Alluring And Attractive Was He To You Yesterday, A Great Hope, A Sea To Swim In; Now, You Have Found His Shores, Found It A Pond, And You Care Not If You Never See It Again.

Envy Is Ignorance, Imitation Is Suicide.

Man Is The Dwarf Of Himself.

People Disparage Knowing And The Intellectual Life, And Urge Doing. I Am Content With Knowing, If Only I Could Know.

A Man Finds Room In The Few Square Inches Of The Face For The Traits Of All His Ancestors; For The Expression Of All His History, And His Wants.

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

Solitude, The Safeguard Of Mediocrity, Is To Genius The Stern Friend

Happy Is The House That Shelters A Friend.

The Service A Man Renders His Friend Is Trivial And Selfish, Compared With The Service He Knows His Friend Stood In Readiness To Yield Him, Alike Before He Had Begun To Serve His Friend, And Now Also. Compared With That Good-will I Bear My Friend, The Benefit It Is In My Power To Render Him Seems Small.

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 Thought Makes Free, So Does The Moral Sentiment. The Mixtures Of Spiritual Chemistry Refuse To Be Analyzed.

Of Course, He Who Has Put Forth His Total Strength In Fit Actions, Has The Richest Return Of Wisdom.

The Near Explains The Far. The Drop Is A Small Ocean. A Man Is Related To All Nature. This Perception Of The Worth Of The Vulgar Is Fruitful In Discoveries. Goethe, In This Very Thing The Most Modern Of The Moderns, Has Shown Us, As None Ever Did, The Genius Of The Ancients.

The Best Lightning Rod For Your Protection Is Your Own Spine.

Fractures Well Cured Make Us More Strong.

It Is Curious That Christianity, Which Is Idealism, Is Sturdily Defended By The Brokers, And Steadily Attacked By The Idealists.

I Have Heard That Whoever Loves Is In No Condition Old. I Have Heard That Whenever The Name Of Man Is Spoken, The Doctrine Of Immortality Is Announced; It Cleaves To His Constitution. The Mode Of It Baffles Our Wit, And No Whisper Comes To Us From The Other Side. But The Inference From The Working Of Intellect, Hiving Knowledge, Hiving Skill,--at The End Of Life Just Ready To Be Born,--affirms The Inspirations Of Affection And Of The Moral Sentiment.

You Cannot Do A Kindness Too Soon.

Talent Alone Cannot Make A Writer. There Must Be A Man Behind The Book.

Nature Is The Symbol Of Spirit.

The Scholar May Lose Himself In Schools, In Words, And Become A Pedant; But When He Comprehends His Duties, He Above All Men Is Arealist, And Converses With Things.

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Eugene Delacroix

Jennifer Ellison

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