Background Image

...

When We See A Soul Whose Acts Are All Regal, Graceful, And Pleasant As Roses, We Must Thank God That Such Things Can Be And Are.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

When We See A

Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

When We See A Soul Whose Acts Are All Regal, Graceful, And Pleasant As Roses, We Must Thank God That Such Things Can Be And Are.

Views: 25342

Topic

More From Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The World Is Young: The Former Great Men Call To Us Affectionately. We Too Must Write Bibles, To Unite Again The Heavens And The Earthly World.

My Life Is Not An Apology, But A Life. It Is For Itself And Not For A Spectacle. I Much Prefer That It Should Be Of A Lower Strain, So It Be Genuine And Equal, Than That It Should Be Glittering And Unsteady.

You Will Always Find Those Who Think They Know What Is Your Duty Better Than You Know It.

We Are Always Getting Ready To Live But Never Living.

Law Of Attraction

We Know Who Is Benevolent, By Quite Other Means Than The Amount Of Subscriptions To Soup-societies. It Is Only Low Merits That Canbe Enumerated.

My Doom And My Strength Is To Be Solitary.

These Times Of Ours Are Series And Full Of Calamity, But All Times Are Essentially Alike. As Soon As There Is Life There Is Danger.

Poetry Teaches The Enormous Force Of A Few Words, And, In Proportion To The Inspiration, Checks Loquacity.

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.

The Soul Raised Over Passion Beholds Identity And Eternal Causation, Perceives The Self-existance Of Truth And Right, And Calms Itself With Knowing That All Things Go Well.

The Essence Of All Jokes, Of All Comedy, Seems To Be An Honest Or Well Intended Halfness; A Non Performance Of That Which Is Pretended To Be Performed, At The Same Time That One Is Giving Loud Pledges Of Performance. The Balking Of The Intellect, Is Comedy And It Announces Itself In The Pleasant Spasms We Call Laughter.

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

It Is Not The Irregular Hours Or Irregular Diet That Makes The Romantic Life.

Manners Make The Fortune Of The Ambitious Youth.

As The Traveler Who Has Lost His Way, Throws His Reins On His Horse's Neck, And Trusts To The Instinct Of The Animal To Find His Road, So Must We Do With The Divine Animal Who Carries Us Through This World

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

Why Has My Motley Diary No Jokes? Because It Is A Soliloquy And Every Man Is Grave Alone.

The Leaves Are Falling, Falling As From Way Off, As Though Far Gardens Withered In The Skies; They Are Falling With Denying Gestures. And In The Nights The Heavy Earth Is Falling From All The Stars Down Into Loneliness. We All Are Falling. This Hand Falls. And Look At Others: It Is In Them All. And Yet There Is One Who Holds This Falling Endlessly Gently In His Hands.

Words Are Also Actions, And Actions Are A Kind Of Words.

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

If The Vast And The Spiritual Are Omitted, So Are The Practical And The Moral.

Tis The Privilege Of Art Thus To Play Its Cheerful Part, Man On Earth To Acclimate And Bend The Exile To His Fate.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It. Many Will Read The Book Before One Thinks Of Quoting A Passage. As Soon As He Has Done This, That Line Will Be Quoted East And West.

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

Our Statute Is A Currency Which We Stamp With Our Own Portrait.

Successful People Live Well, Laugh Often, And Love Much. They've Filled A Niche And Accomplished Tasks So As To Leave The World Better Than They Found It, While Looking For The Best In Others, And Giving The Best They Have.

People Do Not Deserve To Have Good Writing, They Are So Pleased With Bad.

There Is An Optical Illusion About Every Person We Meet.

Optical Illusions

Transcendentalism

The Only Way To Have A Friend Is To Be One.

The Dice Of God Are Always Loaded.

Wherever We Go, Whatever We Do, Self Is The Sole Subject We Study And Learn.

The Wings Of Time Are Black And White, Pied With Morning And With Night.

Black And White

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

The Mind Is A Finer Body, And Resumes Its Functions Of Feeding, Digesting, Absorbing, Excluding, And Generating, In A New And Ethereal Element. Here, In The Brain, Is All The Process Of Alimentation Repeated, In The Acquiring, Comparing, Digesting, And Assimilating Of Experience. Here Again Is The Mystery Of Generation Repeated.

The Only Compensation Which War Offers For Its Manifold Mischiefs, Is In The Great Personal Qualities To Which It Gives Scope And Occasion.

Personal Qualities

All Goes To Show That The Soul In Man Is Not An Organ, But Animates And Exercises All The Organs; Is Not A Function, Like The Power Of Memory, Of Calculation, Of Comparison, But Uses These As Hands And Feet; Is Not A Faculty, But A Light, Is Not The Intellect Or The Will, But The Master Of The Intellect And The Will; Is The Background Of Our Being, In Which They Lie,--an Immensity Not Possessed And That Cannot Be Possessed.

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.

Give Me Truths For I Am Weary Of The Surfaces.

The Eyes Of Men Converse As Much As Their Tongues.

The Lover Of Letters Loves Power Too.

The Permanence Of All Books Is Fixed By No Effort Friendly Or Hostile, But By Their Own Specific Gravity, Or The Intrinsic Importance Of Their Contents To The Constant Mind Of Man.

Who Shall Set A Limit To The Influence Of A Human Being? There Are Men, Who, By Their Sympathetic Attractions, Carry Nations Withthem, And Lead The Activity Of The Human Race. And If There Be Such A Tie, That, Wherever The Mind Of Man Goes, Nature Will Accompany Him, Perhaps There Are Men Whose Magnetisms Are Of That Force To Draw Material And Elemental Powers, And, Where They Appear, Immense Instrumentalities Organize Around Them.

To Be Great, You Must Be Misunderstood

Books Take Their Place According To Their Specific Gravity As Surely As Potatoes In A Tub.

The Young Men Were Born With Knives In Their Brain, A Tendency To Introversion, Self-dissection, Anatomizing Of Motives.

If You Will Not Lend Me The Money, How Can I Pay You?

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.

To Fill The Hour; That Is Happiness To Fill The Hour, And Leave No Crevice For A Repentance Or An Approval.

Our Country, Customs, Laws, Our Ambitions, And Our Notions Of Fit And Fair-all These We Never Made; We Found Them Ready-made; We But Quote From Them. What Would Remain To Me If This Art Of Appropriation Were Derogatory To Genius? Every One Of My Writings Has Been Furnished To Me By A Thousand Different Persons, A Thousand Things; Wise And Foolish Have Brought Me, Without Suspecting It, The Offering Of Their Thoughts, Faculties, And Experience. My Work Is An Aggregation Of Beings Taken From The Whole Of Nature. It Bears The Name Of Goethe.

The Universe Does Not Jest With Us, But Is In Earnest.

His Heart Was As Great As The World, But There Was No Room In It To Hold The Memory Of A Wrong.

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.

Nature And Literature Are Subjective Phenomena; Every Evil And Every Good Thing Is A Shadow Which We Cast

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

Ideas Must Work Through The Brains And The Arms Of Good And Brave Men Or They Are No Better Than Dreams.

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.

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

When It Comes To Divide An Estate, The Politest Men Quarrel.

It Is Only When Mind And Character Slumber That The Dress Can Be Seen. If The Intellect Were Always Awake, And Every Noble Sentiment, The Man Might Go In Huckaback Or Mats, And His Dress Would Be Admired And Imitated.

Nature Is Made To Conspire With Spirit To Emancipate Us.

Freedom Has Nothing To Do With Having The Right To Vote For Your Oppressor; Freedom Is Not Having Any Form Of Oppression.

The State Is Our Neighbors; Our Neighbors Are The State.

A Breath Of Will Blows Eternally Through The Universe Of Souls In The Direction Of Right And Necessity. It Is The Air Which All Intellects Inhale And Exhale, And It Is The Wind Which Blows The Worlds Into Order And Orbit.

We Must Be Courteous To A Man As We Are To A Picture, Which We Are Willing To Give The Advantage Of A Good Light.

Could Shakespeare Give A Theory Of Shakespeare?

The Life Of Truth Is Cold.

Self-trust Is The First Secret Of Success, The Belief That If You Are Here The Authorities Of The Universe Put You Here, And For Cause, Or With Some Task Strictly Appointed You In Your Constitution, And So Long As You Work At That You Are Well And Successful

I Could Better Eat With One Who Did Not Respect The Truth Or The Laws, Than With A Sloven And Unpresentable Person. Moral Qualities Rule The World, But At Shorter Distances, The Senses Are Despotic.

People Only See What They Are Prepared To See. If You Look For What Is Good And What You Can Be Grateful For You Will Find It Everywhere.

It Is Commonly Observed That A Sudden Wealth, Like A Prize Drawn In A Lottery Or A Large Bequest To A Poor Family, Does Not Permanently Enrich. They Have Served No Apprenticeship To Wealth, And With The Rapid Wealth Come Rapid Claims Which They Do Not Know How To Deny, And The Treasure Is Quickly Dissipated.

I Find It A Great And Fatal Difference Whether I Court The Muse, Or The Muse Courts Me. That Is The Ugly Disparity Between Age And Youth.

Peace Cannot Be Achieved Through Violence, It Can Only Be Attained Through Understanding.

Some People Will Tell You There Is A Great Deal Of Poetry And Fine Sentiment In A Chest Of Tea.

Live In The Sunshine, Swim The Sea, Drink The Wild Air.

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.

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

Of Nature Itself Upon The Soul; The Sunrise, The Haze Of Autumn, The Winter Starlight Seem Interlocutors; The Prevailing Sense Is That Of An Exposition In Poetry; A High Discourse, The Voice Of The Speaker Seems To Breathe As Much From The Landscape As From His Own Breast; It Is Nature Communing With The Seer.

Plants Are The Young Of The World, Vessels Of Health And Vigor; But They Grope Ever Upward Towards Consciousness; The Trees Are Imperfect Men, And Seem To Bemoan Their Imprisonment, Rooted In The Ground.

Doing Well Is A Result Of Doing Good.

Who Loses A Day Loses Life.

The Stars Awaken A Certain Reverence, Because Though Always Present, They Are Inaccessible.

A Great Man Will Find A Great Subject, Or Which Is The Same Thing, Make Any Subject Great.

Greek Architecture Is The Flowering Of Geometry.

Don't Be Pushed By Your Problems. Be Led By Your Dreams.

But Do Your Work, And I Shall Know You. Do Your Work, And You Shall Reinforce Yourself.

All History Is The Decline Of War, Though The Slow Decline. All That Society Has Yet Gained Is Mitigation; The Doctrine Of The Right Of War Still Remains.

Beauty Brings Its Own Fancy Price, For All That A Man Hath Will He Give For His Love.

Poets Should Be Law-givers; That Is, The Boldest Lyric Inspiration Should Not Chide And Insult, But Should Announce And Lead The Civil Code, And The Day's Work.

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

The Chief Mourner Does Not Always Attend The Funeral.

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

Man Exists For His Own Sake And Not To Add A Laborer To The State.

He Presents Me With What Is Always An Acceptable Gift Who Brings Me News Of A Great Thought Before Unknown. He Enriches Me Without Impoverishing Himself.

The World Is The Ring Of His Spells, And The Play Of His Miracles.

It Is An Esoteric Doctrine Of Society, That A Little Wickedness Is Good To Make Muscle; As If Conscience Were Not Good For Hands And Legs.

The Wonder Is That We Can See These Trees And Not Wonder More.

The Good Lawyer Is Not The Man Who Has An Eye To Every Side And Angle Of Contingency, And Qualifies All His Qualifications, But Who Throws Himself On Your Part So Heartily, That He Can Get You Out Of A Scrape.

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.

One Definition Of Man Is An Intelligence Served By Organs.

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.

No Orator Can Top The One Who Can Give Good Nicknames.

It Is Long Ere We Discover How Rich We Are. Our History, We Are Sure, Is Quite Tame: We Have Nothing To Write, Nothing To Infer. But Our Wiser Years Still Run Back To The Despised Recollections Of Childhood, And Always We Are Fishing Up Some Wonderful Article Out Of That Pond; Until, By And By, We Begin To Suspect That The Biography Of The One Foolish Person We Know Is, In Reality, Nothing Less Than The Miniature Paraphrase Of The Hundred Volumes Of The Universal History.

No One Suspects The Days To Be Gods.

Let The Amelioration In Our Laws Of Property Proceed From The Concession Of The Rich, Not From The Grasping Of The Poor. Let Us Understand That The Equitable Rule Is, That No One Should Take More Than His Share, Let Him Be Ever So Rich.

How Can He [today's Writer] Be Honored, When He Does Not Honor Himself; When He Loses Himself In The Crowd; When He Is No Longer The Lawgiver, But The Sycophant, Ducking To The Giddy Opinion Of A Reckless Public.

Science Surpasses The Old Miracles Of Mythology.

Without Ambition One Starts Nothing. Without Work One Finishes Nothing. The Prize Will Not Be Sent To You. You Have To Win It.

He Who Has A Thousand Friends Has Not A Friend To Spare, While He Who Has One Enemy Shall Meet Him Everywhere.

Religion Must Always Be A Crab Fruit; It Cannot Be Grafted, And Keep Its Wild Beauty.

A Man Should Not Be A Silkworm; Nor A Nation A Tent Of Caterpillars.

The Most Advanced Nations Are Always Those Who Navigate The Most. The Power Which The Sea Requires In The Sailor Makes A Man Of Him Very Fast, And The Change Of Shores And Population Clears His Head Of Much Nonsense Of His Wigwam.

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

There Is No Good Theory Of Disease Which Does Not At Once Suggest A Cure.

Eloquence Is The Power To Translate A Truth Into Language Perfectly Intelligible To The Person To Whom You Speak.

A Man Is Related To All Nature.

I Will No Longer Confer, Differ, Refer, Defer, Prefer, Or Suffer. I Renounce The Whole Tribe Of Fero. I Embrace Absolute Life.

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!

I Cannot Often Enough Say, That A Man Is Only A Relative And Representative Nature. Each Is A Hint Of The Truth, But Far Enough From Being That Truth, Which Yet He Quite Newly And Inevitably Suggests To Us. If I Seek It In Him, I Shall Not Find It.

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

Science In England, In America, Is Jealous Of Theory, Hates The Name Of Love And Moral Purpose. There's Revenge For This Humanity.what Manner Of Man Does Science Make? The Boy Is Not Attracted. He Says, I Do Not Wish To Be Such A Kind Of Man As My Professor Is.

We Can Only Obey Our Own Polarity.

A Day Is A Miniature Eternity.

The Secret Of Ugliness Consists Not In Irregularity, But In Being Uninteresting.

Funny Relationship

For, When Men Shall Meet As They Ought, Each A Benefactor, A Shower Of Stars, Clothed With Thoughts, With Deeds, With Accomplishments, It Should Be The Festival Of Nature Which All Things Announce. Of Such Friendship, Love In The Sexes Is The First Symbol, As All Other Things Are Symbols Of Love. Those Relations To The Best Men, Which, At One Time, We Reckoned The Romances Of Youth, Become, In The Progress Of Character, The Most Solid Enjoyment.

The Virtue Of Books Is To Be Readable.

Life Only Avails, Not The Having Lived.

Time Dissipates To Shining Ether The Solid Angularity Of Facts.

Earth Proudly Wears The Parthenon As The Best Gem Upon Her Zone.

Men Of God Have Always, From Time To Time, Walked Among Men, And Made Their Commission Felt In The Heart And Soul Of The Commonest Hearer.

A Man Must Keep An Eye On His Servants, If He Would Not Have Them Rule Him.

Democracy Is Morose, And Runs To Anarchy.

The World Is All Gates, All Opportunities, Strings Of Tension Waiting To Be Struck.

Go Out Of The House To See The Moon, And't Is Mere Tinsel; It Will Not Please As When Its Light Shines Upon Your Necessary Journey.

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.

The Mob Is Man Voluntarily Descending To The Nature Of The Beast. Its Fit Hour Of Activity Is Night. Its Actions Are Insane Like Its Whole Constitution. It Persecutes A Principle; It Would Whip A Right; It Would Tar And Feather Justice, By Inflicting Fire And Outrage Upon The Houses And Persons Of Those Who Have These. It Resembles The Prank Of Boys, Who Run With Fire-engines To Put Out The Ruddy Aurora Streaming To The Stars.

If The Gatherer Gathers Too-much, Nature Takes Out Of The Man What She Puts Into His Chest; Swells The Estate, But Kills The Owner. Nature Hates, Monopolies And Exceptions.

Belief And Love,--a Believing Love Will Relieve Us Of A Vast Load Of Care. O My Brothers, God Exists. There Is A Soul At The Centre Of Nature, And Over The Will Of Every Man, So That None Of Us Can Wrong The Universe.

The Wise Man Always Throws Himself On The Side Of His Assailants. It Is More His Interest Than It Is Theirs To Find His Weak Point.

Don't Waste Yourself In Rejection, Nor Bark Against The Bad, But Chant The Beauty Of The Good.

Everywhere I Am Hindered Of Meeting God In My Brother, Because He Has Shut His Own Temple Doors And Recites Fables Merely Of His Brother's, Or His Brother's Brother's God.

Many Might Go To Heaven With Half The Labor They Go To Hell.

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

For, Though The Origin Of Most Of Our Words Is Forgotten, Each Word Was At First A Stroke Of Genius, And Obtained Currency, Because For The Moment It Symbolized The World To The First Speaker And To The Hearer. The Etymologist Finds The Deadest Word To Have Been Once A Brilliant Picture.

A Cynic Can Chill And Dishearten With A Single Word.

Nature Is No Spendthrift, But Takes The Shortest Way To Her Ends.

"do Not Call Yourself An "artist-photographer" And Make "artist-painters" And "artist-sculptors" Laugh; Call Yourself A Photographer And Wait For Artists To Call You Brother."

Let The River Roll Which Way It Will, Cities Will Rise On Its Banks.

But A Compassion For That Which Is Not And Cannot Be Useful And Lovely, Is Degrading And Futile.

See Only That Thou Work And Thou Canst Not Escape The Reward.

What Care Though Rival Cities Soar Along The Stormy Coast, Penn's Town, New York, Baltimore, If Boston Knew The Most!

And Last Of All, High Over Thought, In The World Of Morals, Fate Appears As Vindicator, Levelling The High, Lifting The Low, Requiring Justice In Man, And Always Striking Soon Or Late When Justice Is Not Done. What Is Useful Will Last, What Is Hurtful Will Sink.

When I Go Into The Garden With A Spade And Dig A Bed I Feel Such An Exhilaration And Health That I Discover That I Have Been Defrauding Myself All This Time In Letting Others Do For Me What I Should Have Done With My Own Hands.

The Force Of Character Is Cumulative.

The Soul Is No Traveller; The Wise Man Stays At Home, And When His Necessities, His Duties, On Any Occasion Call Him From His House, Or Into Foreign Lands, He Is At Home Still, And Shall Make Men Sensible By The Expression Of His Countenance, That He Goes The Missionary Of Wisdom And Virtue, And Visits Cities And Men Like A Sovereign, And Not Like An Interloper Or A Valet.

The Music That Can Deepest Reach And Cure All Ill Is Cordial Speech.

Every Great Institution Is The Lengthened Shadow Of A Single Man. His Character Determines The Character Of The Organization.

Only Poetry Inspires Poetry.

Let Us Take Our Bloated Nothingness Out Of The Path Of The Divine Circuits.

The Case Wouldn't Be Overweight If You Didn't Have So Many Shoes. How Many Do You Really Need? This Pair, For Example, I Swear You Never Even Wore Them.

There Is One Topic Peremptorily Forbidden To All Well-bred, To All Rational Mortals, Namely, Their Distempers.

We Judge Of A Man's Wisdom By His Hope, Knowing That The Inexhaustibleness Of Nature Is An Immortal Youth.

If I Quake, What Matters It What I Quake At? Our Proper Vice Takes Form In One Or Another Shape, According To The Sex, Age, Or Temperament Of The Person, And, If We Are Capable Of Fear, Will Readily Find Terrors.

Women See Through Claude Lorraines.

We Learn Geology The Morning After The Earthquake, On Ghastly Diagrams Of Cloven Mountains, Upheaved Plains, And The Dry Bed Of The Sea.

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

The Wave Of Evil Washes All Our Institutions Alike.

Nothing Can Be More Delicate Without Being Fantastical, Nothing More Firm And Based In Nature And Sentiment, Than The Courtship And Mutual Carriage Of The Sexes.

Pride Ruined The Angels.

Excite The Soul, And The Weather And The Town And Your Condition In The World All Disappear; The World Itself Loses Its Solidity, Nothing Remains But The Soul And The Divine Presence In Which It Lives.

Pay No Heed To The Average Photographer's Remarks Upon "flat" And "weak" Negatives. Probably He Is Flat, Weak, Stale, And Unprofitable; Your Negative May Be First-rate, And Probably Is If He Does Not Approve Of It.

Everything In Nature Goes By Law, And Not By Luck.

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.

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 Borrowing Is Often Honest Enough, And Comes Of Magnanimity And Stoutness. A Great Man Quotes Bravely And Will Not Draw On His Invention When His Memory Serves Him With A Word As Good.

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.

We Rail At Trade, But The Historian Of The World Will See That It Was The Principle Of Liberty; That It Settled America, And Destroyed Feudalism, And Made Peace And Keeps Peace; That It Will Abolish Slavery.

The Orator Is Thereby An Orator That Keeps His Feet Ever On A Fact.

A Sleeping Child Gives Me The Impression Of A Traveler In A Very Far Country.

Our Condition As Men Is Risky And Ticklish Enough. One Can Not Be Sure Of Himself And His Fortune An Hour, But He May Be Whisked Off Into Some Pitiable Or Ridiculous Plight.

Higher Than The Question Of Our Duration Is The Question Of Our Deserving. Immortality Will Come To Such As Are Fit For It, And He Would Be A Great Soul In Future Must Be A Great Soul Now.

The Value Of A Principle Is The Number Of Things It Will Explain.

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.

Nothing Can Be Colder Than His Head, When The Lightnings Of His Imagination Are Playing In The Sky.

Yet Things Are Knowable! They Are Knowable, Because, Being From One, Things Correspond. There Is A Scale: And The Correspondence Of Heaven To Earth, Of Matter To Mind, Of The Part To The Whole, Is Our Guide. As There Is A Science Of Stars, Called Astronomy; And Science Of Quantities, Called Mathematics; A Science Of Qualities, Called Chemistry; So There Is A Science Of Sciences,--i Call It Dialectic,--which Is The Intellect Discriminating The False And The True.

The Civility Of No Race Can Be Perfect Whilst Another Race Is Degraded.

We Do Not Yet Trust The Unknown Powers Of Thought. Whence Came All These Tools, Inventions, Book Laws, Parties, Kingdoms? Out Of The Invisible World, Through A Few Brains. The Arts And Institutions Of Men Are Created Out Of Thought. The Powers That Make The Capitalist Are Metaphysical, The Force Of Method And Force Of Will Makes Trade, And Builds Towns.

The Value Of A Dollar Is Social, As It Is Created By Society.

And Dazzling Memory Revive.refresh The Faded Tints, Recut The Aged Prints, And Write My Old Adventures, With The Pen Which, On The First Day, Drew Upon The Tablets Blue The Dancing Pleiads, And The Eternal Men.

Men Achieve A Certain Greatness Unawares When Working To Another Aim.

The Only Person You Are Destined To Become Is The Person You Decide To Be.

I Hate This Shallow Americanism Which Hopes To Get Rich By Credit, To Get Knowledge By Raps On Midnight Tables, To Learn The Economy Of The Mind By Phrenology, Or Skill Without Study, Or Mastery Without Apprenticeship.

I Pack My Trunk, Embrace My Friends, Embark On The Sea And At Last Wake Up In Naples, And There Beside Me Is The Stern Fact, The Sad Self, Unrelenting, Identical, That I Fled From.

The Key To Every Man Is His Thought. Sturdy And Defying Though He Look, He Has A Helm Which He Obeys, Which Is The Idea After Which All His Facts Are Classified. He Can Only Be Reformed By Showing Him A New Idea Which Commands His Own.

If You Meet A Sectary, Or A Hostile Partisan, Never Recognize The Dividing Lines; But Meet On What Common Ground Remains,--if Onlythat The Sun Shines, And The Rain Rains For Both; The Area Will Widen Very Fast, And Ere You Know It The Boundary Mountains, On Which The Eye Had Fastened, Have Melted Into Air.

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.

It Is Wonderful How Soon A Piano Gets Into A Log-hut On The Frontier. You Would Think They Found It Under A Pine-stump. With It Comes A Latin Grammar, And One Of Those Tow-head Boys Has Written A Hymn On Sunday. Now Let Colleges, Now Let Senates Take Heed! For Here Is One Who, Opening These Fine Tastes On The Basis Of The Pioneer's Iron Constitution, Will Gather All Their Laurels In His Strong Hands.

Let Ideas Establish Their Legitimate Sway Again In Society, Let Life Be Fair And Poetic, And The Scholars Will Gladly Be Lovers, Citizens, And Philanthropists.

We Do Not Yet Trust The Unknown Power Of Thoughts.

Power Of Thought

Nations Have Lost Their Old Omnipotence; The Patriotic Tiedoes Not Hold. Nations Are Getting Obsolete, We Go And Live Where We Will.

Trending Author

Julia Ward Howe

Francis Scott Key

Category