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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.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Wise Cultivated, Genial Conversation

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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.

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A Sage Is The Instructor Of A Hundred Ages.

Do The Thing And You Will Have The Power. But They That Do Not The Thing, Had Not The Power.

As Gas-light Is Found To Be The Best Nocturnal Police, So The Universe Protects Itself By Pitiless Publicity.

Wisdom Is Like Electricity. There Is No Permanently Wise Man, But Men Capable Of Wisdom, Who, Being Put Into Certain Company, Or Other Favorable Conditions, Become Wise For A Short Time, As Glasses Rubbed Acquire Electric Power For A While.

We Fetch Fire And Water, Run About All Day Among The Shops And Markets, And Get Our Clothes And Shoes Made And Mended, And Are Thevictims Of These Details, And Once In A Fortnight We Arrive Perhaps At A Rational Moment.

The Secret In Education Lies In Respecting The Student.

In The Uttermost Meaning Of The Words, Thought Is Devout, And Devotion Is Thought. Deep Calls Unto Deep.

Though Love Repine, And Reason Chafe, There Came A Voice Without Reply,- "'tis Man's Perdition To Be Safe, When For The Truth He Ought To Die."

Machinery Is Aggressive. The Weaver Becomes A Web, The Machinist A Machine. If You Do Not Use The Tools, They Use You. All Tools Are In One Sense Edge-tools, And Dangerous.

The Cruelest Foe Is A Masked Benefactor. The Wars Which Make History So Dreary Have Served The Cause Of Truth And Virtue.

It Is So Wonderful To Our Neurologists That A Man Can See Without His Eyes, That It Does Not Occur To Them That Is Just As Wonderful That He Should See With Them; And That Is Ever The Difference Between The Wise And The Unwise: The Latter Wonders At What Is Unusual, The Wise Man Wonders At The Usual.

What A Searching Preacher Of Self-command Is The Varying Phenomenon Of Health.

Every Great Man Is A Unique. The Scipionism Of Scipio Is Precisely That Part He Could Not Borrow.

The Hearing Ear Is Always Found Close To The Speaking Tongue.

Columbus Discovered No Isle Or Key So Lonely As Himself.

The Reverence For The Deeds Of Our Ancestors Is A Treacherous Sentiment. Their Merit Was Not To Reverence The Old, But To Honor The Present Moment; And We Falsely Make Them Excuses Of The Very Habit Which They Hated And Defied.

The Best Effort Of A Fine Person Is Felt After We Have Left Their Presence.

Don't Be A Cynic And Disconsolate Preacher. Don't Bewail And Moan. Omit The Negative Propositions. Challenge Us With Incessant Affirmatives.

As Long As Any Man Exists, There Is Some Need Of Him.

Your Actions Speak So Loud, I Can't Hear What You Say.

We Are The Prisoners Of Ideas.

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

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

If You Put A Chain Around The Neck Of A Slave, The Other End Fastens Itself Around Your Own.

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.

Happiness Is A Perfume You Cannot Pour On Others Without Getting Some On Yourself.

You Cannot Do A Kindness Too Soon, For You Never Know How Soon It Will Be Too Late.

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

It Is Hard To Mesmerize Ourselves, To Whip Our Own Top; But Through Sympathy We Are Capable Of Energy And Endurance. Concert Fires People To A Certain Fury Of Performance They Can Rarely Reach Alone.

Shall I Tell You The Secret Of The True Scholar? It Is This: Every Man I Meet Is My Master In Some Point, And In That I Learn Of Him.

Criticism Should Not Be Querulous And Wasting, All Knife And Root-puller, But Guiding, Instructive, Inspiring, A South Wind, Not An East Wind.

The Imitator Dooms Himself To Hopeless Mediocrity.

Whatever Events In Progress Shall Disgust Men With Cities, And Infuse Into Them The Passion For Country Life, And Country Pleasures, Will Render A Service To The Whole Face Of This Continent, And Will Further The Most Poetic Of All The Occupations Of Real Life, The Bringing Out By Art The Native But Hidden Graces Of The Landscape.

Beware When The Great God Lets Loose A Thinker On This Planet.

The Corruption Of Man Is Followed By The Corruption Of Language. ... In Due Time, The Fraud Is Manifest, And Words Lose All Power To Stimulate The Understanding Or The Affections.

It Is The Ignorant And Childish Part Of Mankind That Is The Fighting Part. Idle And Vacant Minds Want Excitement

Society Is Frivolous, And Shreds Its Day Into Scraps, Its Conversation Into Ceremonies And Escapes.

A Man Is A Little Thing Whilst He Works By And For Himself, But, When He Gives Voice To The Rules Of Love And Justice, Is Godlike, His Word Is Current In All Countries; And All Men, Though His Enemies, Are Made His Friends And Obey It As Their Own.

Nothing Is More Disgusting Than The Crowing About Liberty By Slaves, As Most Men Are, And The Flippant Mistaking For Freedom Of Some Paper Preamble Like A Declaration Of Independence, Or The Statute Right To Vote, By Those Who Have Never Dared To Think Or To Act.

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

Coal Is A Portable Climate.

There The Great Planter Plants Of Fruitful Worlds The Grain, And With A Million Spells Enchants The Souls That Walk In Pain.

We Don't Grow Old. When We Cease To Grow, We Become Old.

How Beautiful To Have The Church Always Open, So That Every Tired Wayfaring Man May Come In And Be Soothed By All That Art Can Suggest Of A Better World When He Is Weary With This.

The Greatest Difficulty Is That Men Do Not Think Enough Of Themselves, Do Not Consider What It Is That They Are Sacrificing When They Follow In A Herd, Or When They Cater For Their Establishment.

The World Is Upheld By The Veracity Of Good Men: They Make The Earth Wholesome. They Who Lived With Them Found Life Glad And Nutritious. Life Is Sweet And Tolerable Only In Our Belief In Such Society.

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

The Advantage Of Riches Remains With Him Who Procured Them, Not With The Heir.

The Machine Unmakes The Man. Now That The Machine Is So Perfect, The Engineer Is Nobody.

A Cynic Can Chill And Dishearten With A Single Word.

The Reason Why Any One Refuses His Assent To Your Opinion, Or His Aid To Your Benevolent Design, Is In You: He Refuses To Accept You As A Bringer Of Truth, Because, Though You Think You Have It, He Feels That You Have It Not. You Have Not Given Him The Authentic Sign.

The Resources Of The Scholar Are Proportioned To His Confidence In The Attributes Of The Intellect.

In The Fiji Islands, It Appears, Cannibalism Is Now Familiar. They Eat Thier Own Wives And Children. We Only Devour Widows' Houses, And Great Merchants Outwit And Absorb The Substance Of Small Ones, And Every Man Feeds On His Neighbor's Labor If He Can. It Is A Milder Form Of Cannibalism.

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.

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

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

Patience And Fortitude Conquer All Things.

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.

The Sum Of Wisdom Is That Time Is Never Lost That Is Devoted To Work.

The Poem Is A Confession Of Faith.

Our Life Is An Apprenticeship To The Truth That Around Every Circle Another Can Be Drawn; That There Is No End In Nature, But Every End Is A Beginning, And Under Every Deep A Lower Deep Opens.

The One Prudence In Life Is Concentration; The One Evil Is Dissipation: And It Makes No Difference Whether Our Dissipations Are Coarse Or Fine; Property And Its Cares, Friends And A Social Habit, Or Politics, Or Music, Or Feasting. Everything Is Good Which Takes Away One Plaything And Delusion More, And Drives Us Home To Add One Stroke Of Faithful Work.

Every Vice Is Only An Exaggeration Of A Necessary And Virtuous Function.

Exaggeration Is

I Cannot Go To The Houses Of My Nearest Relatives, Because I Do Not Wish To Be Alone. Society Exists By Chemical Affinity, And Not Otherwise.

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

Cities Force Growth And Make Men Talkative And Entertaining, But They Make Them Artificial. What Possesses Interest For Us Is Thenatural Of Each, His Constitutional Excellence. This Is Forever A Surprise, Engaging And Lovely; We Cannot Be Satiated With Knowing It, And About It; And It Is This Which The Conversation With Nature Cherishes And Guards.

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.

It Was High Counsel That I Once Heard Given To A Young Person, 'always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.'

How Shall A Man Escape From His Ancestors, Or Draw Off From His Veins The Black Drop Which He Drew From His Father's Or Mother's Life?

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.

It Has Come To Be Practically A Sort Of Rule In Literature That A Man, Having Once Shown Himself Capable Of Original Writing, Is Entitled Thenceforth To Steal From The Writings Of Others At Discretion.

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

When We Attempt To Define And Describe God, Both Language And Thought Desert Us, And We Are As Helpless As Fools And Savages.

A Man Should Not Go Where He Cannot Carry His Whole Sphere Or Society With Him,mnot Bodily, The Whole Circle Of His Friends, But Atmospherically. He Should Preserve In A New Company The Same Attitude Of Mind And Reality Of Relation, Which His Daily Associates Draw Him To, Else He Is Shorn Of His Best Beams, And Will Be An Orphan In The Merriest Club.

All The Facts Of Nature Are Nouns Of The Intellect, And Make The Grammar Of The Eternal Language. Every Word Has A Double, Trebleor Centuple Use And Meaning.

Genius Always Finds Itself A Century Too Early.

All Life Is An Experiment. The More Experiments You Make The Better.

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

Yet America Is A Poem In Our Eyes; Its Ample Geography Dazzles The Imagination, And It Will Not Wait Long For Metres.

Society Has No Bribe For Me.

Do Not Be Too Timid And Squeamish About Your Actions. All Life Is An Experiment. The More Experiments You Make The Better. What If They Are A Little Coarse And You May Get Your Coat Soiled Or Torn? What If You Do Fail, And Get Fairly Rolled In The Dirt Once Or Twice? Up Again, You Shall Never Be So Afraid Of A Tumble.

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

What A New Face Courage Puts On Everything!

A Person's Life Is Limited But Serving The People Is Limitless. I Want To Devote My Limited Life To Serving The People Limitlessly.

Nothing Can Work Damage To Me Except Myself; The Harm That I Sustain I Carry About With Me And Never Am A Real Sufferer Except By My Own Fault.

Let Him Be Great, And Love Shall Follow Him.

I Am Defeated All The Time, Yet To Victory I Am Born.

Man Is A Stream Whose Source Is Hidden. Our Being Is Descending Into Us From We Know Not Whence.

Masses Are Rude, Lame, Unmade, Pernicious In Their Demands And Influence, And Need Not To Be Flattered, But To Be Schooled. I Wish Not To Concede Anything To Them, But To Tame, Drill, Divide, And Break Them Up, And Draw Individuals Out Of Them.

The Education Of The Will Is The Object Of Our Existence.

The Faith That Stands On Authority Is Not Faith.

Life Is Too Short To Waste . . . 'twill Soon Be Dark; Up! Mind Thine Own Aim, And God Speed The Mark!

Let Us Learn To Live Coarsely, Dress Plainly, And Lie Hard. The Least Habit Of Dominion Over The Palate Has Certain Good Effects Not Easily Estimated.

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.

The Pleasure Of Eloquence Is In Greatest Part Owing Often To The Stimulus Of The Occasion Which Produces It- - To The Magic Of Sympathy, Which Exalts The Feeling Of Each By Radiating On Him The Feeling Of All.

Do You See That Kitten Chasing So Prettily Her Own Tail? If You Could Look With Her Eyes, You Might See Her Surrounded With Hundreds Of Figures Performing Complex Dramas, With Tragic And Comic Issues, Long Conversations, Many Characters, Many Ups And Downs Of Fate.

Fate, Then, Is A Name For Facts Not Yet Passed Under The Fire Of Thought; For Causes Which Are Unpenetrated.

A Strenuous Soul Hates Cheap Success.

Hospitality Consists In A Little Fire, A Little Food, And An Immense Quiet

A Great Mind Is A Good Sailor, As A Great Heart Is.

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

...what Torments Of Pain Have You Endured That Haven't As Yet Arrived? And May Never!

The Merit Claimed For The Anglican Church Is That, If You Let It Alone, It Will Let You Alone.

If You Would Rule The World Quietly, You Must Keep It Amused.

The Evils Of Popular Government Appear Greater Than They Are; There Is Compensation For Them In Spirit And Energy It Awakens.

A Human Being Should Beware How He Laughs, For Then He Shows All His Faults.

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

There Is A Remedy For Every Wrong And A Satisfaction For Every Soul.

When At Last In A Race A New Principle Appears, An Idea--that Conserves It; Ideas Only Save Races.

Every Individual Man Has A Bias Which He Must Obey, And...it Is Only As He Feels And Obeys This That He Rightly Develops And Attains His Legitimate Power In The World. It Is His Magnetic Needle, Which Points Always In One Direction To His Proper Path.... He Is Never Happy Nor Strong Until He Finds It, Keeps It.

Our High Respect For A Well-read Man Is Praise Enough For Literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who Shall Forbid A Wise Skepticism, Seeing That There Is No Practical Question On Which Anything More Than An Approximate Solution Can Be Had?

I Have No Hostility To Nature, But A Child's Love To It. I Expand And Live In The Warm Day Like Corn And Melons.

Sanity Is Very Rare; Every Man Almost And Every Woman Has A Dash Of Madness.

Teach Me Your Mood, O Patient Stars. Who Climb Each Night, The Ancient Sky. Leaving On Space No Shade, No Scars, No Trace Of Age, No Fear To Die.

Every Fact Is Related On One Side To Sensation, And, On The Other, To Morals. The Game Of Thought Is, On The Appearance Of One Of These Two Sides, To Find The Other: Given The Upper, To Find The Under Side.

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

Our Expense Is Almost All For Conformity. It Is For Cake That We Run In Debt; 'tis Not The Intellect, Not The Heart, Not Beauty, Not Worship, That Costs So Much.

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.

There Is Properly No History, Only Biography.

All Inquiry Into Antiquity, All Curiosity Respecting The Pyramids, The Excavated Cities, Stonehenge, The Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is The Desire To Do Away This Wild, Savage, And Preposterous There And Then, And Introduce In Its Place The Here And Now.

Thought And Knowledge Are Natures In Which Apparatus And Pretension Avail Nothing. Gowns, And Pecuniary Foundations, Though Of Towns Of Gold, Can Never Countervail The Least Sentence Or Syllable Of Wit. Forget This, And Out American Colleges Will Recede In Their Public Importance Whilst They Grow Richer Every Year.

Repose And Cheerfulness Is The Badge Of The Gentleman; Repose In Energy.

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.

We Never Touch But At Points.

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

Travel Is A Fools Paradise.

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.

Art, In The Artist, Is Proportion, Or, A Habitual Respect To The Whole By An Eye Loving Beauty In Details. And The Wonder And Charm Of It Is The Sanity In Insanity Which It Denotes.

Sorrow Makes Us All Children Again - Destroys All Differences Of Intellect. The Wisest Know Nothing.

Sugar Is Not So Sweet To The Palate As Sound To The Healthy Ear.

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

Shallow Men Believe In Luck.

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

As Every Man Is Hunted By His Own Daemon, Vexed By His Own Disease, This Checks All His Activity.

There Is A Mortifying Experience In Particular, Which Does Not Fail To Wreak Itself Also In The General History; I Mean "the Foolish Face Of Praise," The Forced Smile Which We Put On In Company Where We Do Not Feel At Ease, In Answer To Conversation Which Does Not Interest Us. The Muscles, Not Spontaneously Moved But Moved, By A Low Usurping Wilfulness, Grow Tight About The Outline Of The Face, With The Most Disagreeable Sensation.

The Universe Is Represented In Every One Of It's Particles. Everything Is Made Of One Hidden Stuff. The World Globes Itself In A Drop Of Dew. The True Doctrine Of Omnipresence Is That God Appears With All His Parts In Every Moss And Cobweb.

To Map Out A Course Of Action And Follow It To An End Requires Some Of The Same Courage That A Soldier Needs.

Without Looking, Then, To Those Extraordinary Social Influences Which Are Now Acting In Precisely This Direction, But Only At Whatis Inevitably Doing Around Us, I Think We Must Regard The Land As A Commanding And Increasing Power On The Citizen, The Sanative And Americanizing Influence, Which Promises To Disclose New Virtues For Ages To Come.

And The Glory Of Character Is In Affronting The Horrors Of Depravity To Draw Thence New Nobilities Of Power: As Art Lives And Thrills In New Use And Combining Of Contrasts, And Mining Into The Dark Evermore For Blacker Pits Of Night.

It Is The Delight Of Vulgar Talent To Dazzle And To Bind The Beholder. But True Genius Seeks To Defend Us From Itself. True Geniuswill Not Impoverish, But Will Liberate, And Add New Sense. If A Wise Man Should Appear In Our Village, He Would Create, In Those Who Conversed With Him, A New Consciousness Of Wealth, By Opening Their Eyes To Unobserved Advantages; He Would Establish A Sense Of Immovable Equality, Calm Us With Assurances That We Could Not Be Cheated; As Every One Would Discern The Checks And Guarantees Of Condition.

Cause And Effect Are Two Sides Of One Fact.

In This Distribution Of Functions, The Scholar Is The Delegated Intellect. In The Right State, He Is, Man Thinking. In The Degenerate State, When The Victim Of Society, He Tends To Become A Mere Thinker, Or, Still Worse, The Parrot Of Other Men's Thinking.

No Institution Will Be Better Than The Institutor.

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.

One Thing Is Forever Good; That One Thing Is Success.

We Cannot Let Our Angels Go; We Do Not See That They Only Go Out That Archangels May Come In.

If, At Any Time, It Comes Into My Head, That A Present Is Due From Me To Somebody, I Am Puzzled What To Give, Until The Opportunity Is Gone.

A Scholar Is A Man With His Inconvenience, That, When You Ask Him His Opinion Of Any Matter, He Must Go Home And Look Up His Manuscripts To Know.

Wherever The Truth Is Injured, Defend It.

All Men Are In Some Degree Impressed By The Face Of The World; Some Men Even To Delight. This Love Of Beauty Is Taste. Others Have The Same Love In Such Success That, Not Content With Admiring, They Seek To Embody It In New Forms. The Creation Of Beauty Is Art.

There Is A Certain Satisfaction In Coming Down To The Lowest Ground Of Politics, For We Get Rid Of Cant And Hypocrisy.

If Thou Fill Thy Brain With Boston And New York, With Fashion And Covetousness, And Wilt Stimulate Thy Jaded Senses With Wine And French Coffee, Thou Shalt Find No Radiance Of Wisdom In The Lonely Waste Of The Pinewoods.

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.

As Thinkers, Mankind Has Ever Divided Into Two Sects, Materialists And Idealists; The First Class Founding On Experience, The Second On Consciousness; The First Class Beginning To Think From The Data Of The Senses, The Second Class Perceive That The Senses Are Not Final And Say, The Senses Give Us Representations Of Things, But What Are The Things Themselves, They Cannot Tell. The Materialist Insists On Facts, On History, On The Force Of Circumstances And The Animal Wants Of Man; The Idealists On The Power Of Thought And Will, On Inspiration, On Miracle, On Individual Culture.

When The Vain Speaker Has Sat Down, And The People Say 'what A Good Speech,' It Still Takes An Ounce To Balance An Ounce.

If A Man Knew Anything, He Would Sit In A Corner And Be Modest; But He Is Such An Ignorant Peacock, That He Goes Bustling Up And Down, And Hits On Extraordinary Discoveries.

Don't Hang A Dismal Picture On The Wall, And Do Not Daub With Sables And Glooms In Your Conversation. Don't Be A Cynic And Disconsolate Preacher. Don't Bewail And Bemoan. Omit The Negative Propositions. Nerve Us With Incessant Affirmatives. Don't Waste Yourself In Rejection, Nor Bark Against The Bad, But Chant The Beauty Of The Good. When That Is Spoken Which Has A Right To Be Spoken, The Chatter And The Criticism Will Stop. Set Down Nothing That Will Not Help Somebody.

Those Who Are Esteemed Umpires Of Taste, Are Often Persons Who Have Acquired Some Knowledge Of Admired Pictures Or Sculptures, Andhave An Inclination For Whatever Is Elegant; But If You Inquire Whether They Are Beautiful Souls, And Whether Their Own Acts Are Like Fair Pictures, You Learn That They Are Selfish And Sensual. Their Cultivation Is Local, As If You Should Rub A Log Of Dry Wood In One Spot To Produce Fire, All The Rest Remaining Cold.

The Unstable Estimates Of Men Crowd To Him Whose Mind Is Filled With A Truth, As The Heaped Waves Of The Atlantic Follow The Moon.

Conversation Is A Game Of Circles.

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

The Right Merchant Is One Who Has The Just Average Of Faculties We Call Common Sense; A Man Of A Strong Affinity For Facts, Who Makes Up His Decision On What He Has Seen. He Is Thoroughly Persuaded Of The Truths Of Arithmetic. There Is Always A Reason, In The Man, For His Good Or Bad Fortune In Making Money. Men Talk As If There Were Some Magic About This. He Knows That All Goes On The Old Road, Pound For Pound, Cent For Cent - For Every Effect A Perfect Cause - And That Good Luck Is Another Name For Tenacity Of Purpose.

I Hate Quotations. Tell Me What You Know.

In Conversation The Game Is, To Say Something New With Old Words. And You Shall Observe A Man Of The People Picking His Way Along, Step By Step, Using Every Time An Old Boulder, Yet Never Setting His Foot On An Old Place.

The Farmer After Sacrificing Pleasure, Taste, Freedom, Thought, Love, To His Work, Turns Out Often A Bankrupt, Like The Merchant.this Result Might Well Seem Astounding. All This Drudgery, From Cockcrowing To Starlight, For All These Years, To End In Mortgages And The Auctioneer's Flag, And Removing From Bad To Worse. It Is Time To Have The Thing Looked Into, And With A Sifting Criticism Ascertained Who Is The Fool.

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

Fashion, Though In A Strange Way, Represents All Manly Virtue. It Is Virtue Gone To Seed: It Is A Kind Of Posthumous Honor. It Does Not Often Caress The Great, But The Children Of The Great: It Is A Hall Of The Past.

[gratitude Is] The Cheerfulness Of Wisdom.

Those Who Cannot Tell What They Desire Or Expect, Still Sigh And Struggle With Indefinite Thoughts And Vast Wishes.

We Teach Boys To Be Such Men As We Are. We Do Not Teach Them To Aspire To Be All They Can. We Do Not Give Them A Training As If Webelieved In Their Noble Nature. We Scarce Educate Their Bodies. We Do Not Train The Eye And The Hand. We Exercise Their Understandings To The Apprehension And Comparison Of Some Facts, To A Skill In Numbers, In Words; We Aim To Make Accountants, Attorneys, Engineers; But Not To Make Able, Earnest, Great- Hearted Men.

I Will Not Hide My Tastes Or Aversions. I Will So Trust That What Is Deep Is Holy, That I Will Do Strongly Before The Sun And Moon Whatever Only Rejoices Me, And The Heart Appoints

As Many Languages As He Has, As Many Friends, As Many Arts And Trades, So Many Times Is He A Man.

Tis A Short Sight To Limit Our Faith In Laws To Those Of Gravity, Of Chemistry, Of Botany, And So Forth.

A Man Makes Inferiors His Superiors By Heat; Self Control Is The Rule. Anger Is An Uncontrollable Feeling That Betrays What You Are When You Are Not Yourself. Anger Is That Powerful Internal Force That Blows Out The Light Of Reason. Know This To Be The Enemy: It Is Anger, Born Of Desire.

A Man's Personal Defects Will Commonly Have With The Rest Of The World Precisely That Importance Which They Have To Himself. If He Makes Light Of Them, So Will Other Men.

He That Rides His Hobby Gently Must Always Give Way To Him That Rides His Hobby Hard.

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

The Moment Our Discourse Rises Above The Ground-line Of Familiar Facts, And Is Inflamed With Passion Or Exalted Thought, It Clothes Itself In Images. A Man Conversing In Earnest, If He Watch His Intellectual Processes, Will Find That Always A Material Image, More Or Less Luminous, Arises In His Mind, Contemporaneous With Every Thought, Which Furnishes The Vestment Of The Thought.... This Imagery Is Spontaneous. It Is The Blending Of Experience With The Present Action Of The Mind. It Is Proper Creation.

He Who Loves Goodness Harbors Angels, Reveres Reverence, And Lives With God.

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

Rhodora! If The Sages Ask Thee Why This Charm Is Wasted On The Earth And Sky, Tell Them, Dear, That If Eyes Were Made For Seeing, Then Beauty Is Its Own Excuse For Being.

Nor Knowest Thou What Argument Thy Life To Thy Neighbor's Creed Has Lent. All Are Needed By Each One; Nothing Is Fair Or Good Alone.

Every Man Is Actually Weak, And Apparently Strong. To Himself, He Seems Weak; To Others, Formidable.

Out Of Plato Come All Things That Are Still Written And Debated About Among Men Of Thought.

Beware Of Too Much Good Staying In Your Hand. It Will Fast Corrupt And Worm Worms. Pay It Away Quickly In Some Sort.

There Is The Illusion Of Time, Which Is Very Deep; Who Has Disposed Of It? Mor Come To The Conviction That What Seems The Succession Of Thought Is Only The Distribution Of Wholes Into Causal Series.

I Suppose You Could Never Explain To The Most Ingenous Molusk That Such A Creature As A Whale Existed.

My Life Is Not An Apology, But A Life.

Every Person Has His Or Her Own Vocation-talent Is The Call.

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.

Men Succeed When They Realize That Their Failures Are The Preparation For Their Victories.

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

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.

The Imagination And The Senses Cannot Be Gratified At The Same Time.

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

Let There Be Worse Cotton And Better Men.

A Moment Is A Concentrated Eternity.

As Long As A Man Stands In His Own Way, Everything Seems To Be In His Way.

Why Should We Grope Among The Dry Bones Of The Past? The Sun Shines Today Also.

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Carl Friedrich Gauss

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