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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.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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You Must Pay For

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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.

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Every Ship Is A Romantic Object, Except That We Sail In.

The Chief Mourner Does Not Always Attend The Funeral.

Let Us Be Poised, Wise And Our Own Today.

I Fear The Popular Notion Of Success Stands In Direct Opposition In All Points To The Real And Wholesome Success. One Adores Public Opinion, The Other, Private Opinion; One, Fame, The Other, Desert; One, Feats, The Other, Humility; One, Lucre, The Other, Love; One, Monopoly, And The Other, Hospitality Of Mind.

Tragedy Is In The Eye Of The Observer, And Not In The Heart Of The Sufferer.

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

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

When The Man Is At Home, His Standing In Society Is Well Known And Quietly Taken; But When He Is Abroad, It Is Problematical, And Is Dependent On The Success Of His Manners.

Our Opinions Of The World, Are Confessions Of Character.

There Is Genius As Well In Virtue As In Intellect. 'tis The Doctrine Of Faith Over Works.

Only Be Admonished By What You Already See, Not To Strike Leagues Of Friendship With Cheap Persons, Where No Friendship Can Be. Our Impatience Betrays Us Into Rash And Foolish Alliances Which No God Attends.

Truth Is The Summit Of Being; Justice Is The Application Of It To Affairs.

What I Need Is Someone Who Will Make Me Do What I Can.

Any Extraordinary Degree Of Beauty In Man Or Woman Involves A Moral Charm.

The World Is Always Childish, And With Each New Gewgaw Of A Revolution Or New Constitution That It Finds, Thinks It Shall Never Cry Any More.

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

The Americans Have No Faith, They Rely On The Power Of A Dollar; They Are Deaf To Sentiment.

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.

Great Men Do Not Content Us. It Is Their Solitude, Not Their Force, That Makes Them Conspicuous.

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

The Sermon Which I Write Inquisitive Of Truth Is Good A Year After, But That Which Is Written Because A Sermon Must Be Writ Is Musty The Next Day.

An Answer In Words Is Delusive; It Is Really No Answer To The Questions You Ask.

And What Fastens Attention, In The Intercourse Of Life, Like Any Passage Betraying Affection Between Two Parties? Perhaps We Never Saw Them Before, And Never Shall Meet Them Again. But We See Them Exchange A Glance, Or Betray A Deep Emotion, And We Are No Longer Strangers. We Understand Them, And Take The Warmest Interest In The Development Of The Romance. All Mankind Love A Lover.

Oh, Be My Friend, And Teach Me To Be Thine!

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

The Highest Beauty Should Be Plain Set.

Live In The Fields, And God Will Give You Lectures On Natural Philosophy Every Day.

Patience And Fortitude Conquer All Things.

My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

But, If We Explore The Literature Of Heroism, We Shall Quickly Come To Plutarch, Who Is Its Doctor And Historian. To Him We Owe The Brasidas, The Dion, The Epaminodas, The Scipio Of Old, And I Must Think We Are More Deeply Indebted To Him Than To All The Ancient Writers. Each Of His "lives" Is A Refutation To The Despondency And Cowardice Of Our Religious And Political Theorists. A Wild Courage, A Stoicism Not Of The Schools, But Of The Blood, Shines In Every Anecdote, And Had Given That Book Immense Fame.

As Sunbeams Stream Through Liberal Space And Nothing Jostle Or Displace, So Waved The Pine-tree Through My Thought And Fanned The Dreams It Never Brought.

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.

Life Is Girt All Round With A Zodiac Of Sciences, The Contributions Of Men Who Have Perished To Add Their Point Of Light To Our Sky. ... These Road-makers On Every Hand Enrich Us. We Must Extend The Area Of Life And Multiply Our Relations. We Are As Much Gainers By Finding A Property In The Old Earth As By Acquiring A New Planet.

Everyone I Meet Is In Some Way My Superior.

The Reason Why Men Do Not Obey Us, Is Because They See The Mud At The Bottom Of Our Eye.

As Men Get On In Life, They Acquire A Love For Sincerity, And Somewhat Less Solicitude To Be Lulled Or Amused. In The Progress Ofthe Character, There Is An Increasing Faith In The Moral Sentiment, And A Decreasing Faith In Propositions.

The Sea Is Masculine, The Type Of Active Strength. Look, What Egg-shells Are Drifting All Over It, Each One, Like Ours, Filled With Men In Ecstasies Of Terror, Alternating With Cockney Conceit, As The Sea Is Rough Or Smooth. Is This Sad-colored Circle An Eternal Cemetery?

Well, The World Has A Million Writers. One Would Think, Then, That Good Thought Would Be As Familiar As Air And Water, And The Gifts Of Each New Hour Would Exclude The Last. Yet We Can Count All Our Good Books; Nay, I Remember Any Beautiful Verse For Twenty Years.

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

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

Behind Us, As We Go, All Things Assume Pleasing Forms, As Clouds Do Far Off. Not Only Things Familiar And Stale, But Even The Tragic And Terrible, Are Comely, As They Take Their Place In The Pictures Of Memory.

I Wiped Away The Weeds And Foam, I Fetched My Sea-born Treasures Home; But The Poor, Unsightly, Noisome Things Had Left Their Beauty On The Shore, With The Sun And The Sand And The Wild Uproar.

We Do Not Quite Forgive A Giver. The Hand That Feeds Us Is In Some Danger Of Being Bitten.

Beauty Is The Mark God Sets On Virtue. Every Natural Action Is Graceful; Every Heroic Act Is Also Decent, And Causes The Place And The Bystanders To Shine.

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

The Surest Poison Is Time.

Time Management

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.

A Good Intention But Fixed And Resolute - Bent On High And Holy Ends, We Shall Find Means To Them On Every Side And At Every Moment; And Even Obstacles And Opposition Will But Make Us "like The Fabled Specter-ships," Which Sail The Fastest In The Very Teeth Of The Wind.

The Measure Of Mental Health Is The Disposition To Find Good Everywhere.

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

The Transcendentalist Adopts The Whole Connection Of Spiritual Doctrine. He Believes In Miracle, In The Perpetual Openness Of Thehuman Mind To New Influx Of Light And Power; He Believes In Inspiration, And In Ecstacy.

The Civility Of No Race Can Be Perfect Whilst Another Race Is Degraded. It Is A Doctrine Alike Of The Oldest And Of The Newest Philosophy, That Man Is One, And That You Cannot Injure Any Member, Without A Sympathetic Injury To All The Members

A Sage Is The Instructor Of A Hundred Ages.

Pride Can Go Without Domestics, Without Fine Clothes, Can Live In A House With Two Rooms, Can Eat Potato, Purslain, Beans, Lyed Corn, Can Work On The Soil, Can Travel Afoot, Can Talk With Poor Men, Or Sit Silent Well Contented With Fine Saloons. But Vanity Costs Money, Labor, Horses, Men, Women, Health And Peace, And Is Still Nothing At Last; A Long Way Leading Nowhere.--only One Drawback; Proud People Are Intolerably Selfish, And The Vain Are Gentle And Giving.

Self-sacrifice Is The Real Miracle Out Of Which All The Reported Miracles Grow. Do Not Go Where The Path May Lead, Go Instead Where There Is No Path And Leave A Trail. Nothing Great Was Ever Achieved Without Enthusiasm. This Time, Like All Times, Is A Very Good One, If We But Know What To Do With It. Shallow Men Believe In Luck. Strong Men Believe In Cause And Effect. The Louder He Talked Of His Honesty, The Quicker We Counted The Silverware.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these Are The Threads On The Loom Of Time, These Are The Lords Of Life.

Life Has A Way Of Demanding That You Live It.

I Feel The Same Truth How Often In My Trivial Conversation With My Neighbours, That Somewhat Higher In Each Of Us Overlooks This By-play, And Jove Nods To Jove From Behind Each Of Us.

Life Is A Series Of Surprises.

Coffee Is Good For Talent, But Genius Wants Prayer.

Self-command Is The Main Elegance.

What We Love That We Have, But By Desire We Bereave Ourselves Of The Love.

God May Forgive Sins, He Said, But Awkwardness Has No Forgiveness In Heaven Or Earth.

Friendship Buys Friendship.

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.

We Legislate Against Forestalling And Monopoly; We Would Have A Common Granary For The Poor; But The Selfishness Which Hoards Thecorn For High Prices, Is The Preventative Of Famine; And The Law Of Self-preservation Is Surer Policy Than Any Legislation Can Be.

Money Is The Representative Of A Certain Quantity Of Corn Or Other Commodity. It Is So Much Warmth, So Much Bread.

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.

We Know Truth When We See It, From Opinion, As We Know When We Are Awake That We Are Awake.

Writing Should Be The Settlement Of Dew On The Leaf.

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

A Friend Is A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere. Before Him I May Think Aloud. I Am Arrived At Last In The Presence Of A Man So Real And Equal, That I May Drop Even Those Undermost Garments Of Dissimulation, Courtesy, And Second Thought, Which Men Never Put Off, And May Deal With Him With The Simplicity And Wholeness With Which One Chemical Atom Meets Another.

There Is One Mind Common To All Individual Men

The Secret Of The Illusoriness Is In The Necessity Of A Succession Of Moods Or Objects. Gladly We Would Anchor, But The Anchorageis Quicksand.

Come Out Of The Azure. Love The Day. Do Not Leave The Sky Out Of Your Landscape.

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

The Wise Through Excess Of Wisdom Is Made A Fool.

Four Snakes Gliding Up And Down A Hollow For No Purpose That I Could See - Not To Eat, Not For Love, But Only Gliding.

Alas For America As I Must So Often Say, The Ungirt, The Diffuse, The Profuse, Procumbent, One Wide Ground Juniper, Out Of Which No Cedar, No Oak Will Rear Up A Mast To The Clouds! It All Runs To Leaves, To Suckers, To Tendrils, To Miscellany. The Air Is Loaded With Poppy, With Imbecility, With Dispersion, & Sloth.

Look Out Into The July Night, And See The Broad Belt Of Silver Flame Which Flashes Up The Half Of Heaven, Fresh And Delicate As The Bonfires Of The Meadow-flies. Yet The Powers Of Numbers Cannot Compute Its Enormous Age,—lasting As Space And Time,—embosomed In Time And Space.

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.

We Live In Succession, In Division, In Parts, In Particles. Meantime Within Man Is The Soul Of The Whole; The Wise Silence; The Universal Beauty, To Which Every Part And Particle Is Equally Related, The Eternal One. And This Deep Power In Which We Exist And Whose Beatitude Is All Accessible To Us, Is Not Only Self-sufficing And Perfect In Every Hour, But The Act Of Seeing And The Thing Seen, The Seer And The Spectacle, The Subject And The Object, Are One. We See The World Piece By Piece, As The Sun, The Moon, The Animal, The Tree; But The Whole, Of Which These Are Shining Parts, Is The Soul.

Nothing External To You Has Any Power Over You.

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

It Is A Mischievous Notion That We Are Come Late Into Nature; That The World Was Finished A Long Time Ago. As The World Was Plastic And Fluid In The Hands Of God, So It Is Ever To So Much Of His Attributes As We Bring To It. To Ignorance And Sin, It Is Flint. They Adapt To Themselves To It As They May; But In Proportion As A Man Has Anything In Him Divine, The Firmament Flows Before Him And Takes His Signet And Form.

Circumstance Does Not Make The Man. Circumstance Reveals Man To Himself.

You Will Think Me Very Pedantic, Gentlemen, But Holiday Though It May Be, I Have Not The Smallest Interest In Any Holiday, Except As It Celebrates Real And Not Pretended Joys.

We Are The Prisoners Of Ideas. They Catch Us Up For Moments Into Their Heaven, And So Fully Engage Us, That We Take No Thought Forthe Morrow, Gaze Like Children, Without An Effort To Make Them Our Own.

The Secret In Education Lies In Respecting The Student.

Let Us Replace Sentimentalism By Realism And Dare To Uncover Those Simple And Terrible Laws Which, Be They Seen Or Unseen, Pervade And Govern.

Every Mind Is Different; And The More It Is Unfolded, The More Pronounced Is That Difference.

To Say Then, The Majority Are Wicked, Means No Malice, No Bad Heart In The Observer, But, Simply That The Majority Are Unripe, Andhave Not Yet Come To Themselves, Do Not Yet Know Their Opinion.

As A Man Thinketh, So Is He, And As A Man Chooseth, So Is He.

In A Tavern Everybody Puts On Airs Except The Landlord.

Human Condition

A Good Intention Clothes Itself With Sudden Power. When A God Wishes To Ride, Any Chip Or Pebble Will Bud And Shoot Out Winged Feet, And Serve Him For A Horse.

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

The Philosophy Of Waiting Is Sustained By All The Oracles Of The Universe.

We Are Of Different Opinions At Different Hours, But We Always May Be Said To Be At Heart On The Side Of Truth.

Different Opinions

All Conservatives Are Such From Personal Defects. They Have Been Effiminated By Position Of Nature, Born Halt And Blind, Through Luxury Of Their Parents, And Can Only, Like Invalids, Act On The Defensive.

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

Nature Is Sanative, Refining, Elevating. How Cunningly She Hides Every Wrinkle Of Her Inconceivable Antiquity Under Roses, And Violets, And Morning Dew! Every Inch Of The Mountains Is Scarred By Unimaginable Convulsions, Yet The New Day Is Purple With The Bloom Of Youth And Love.

The Love That You Withhold Is The Pain That You Carry.

The Greatest Man In History Was The Poorest.

The New Statement Is Always Hated By The Old, And, To Those Dwelling In The Old, Comes Like An Abyss Of Skepticism.

Make Yourself Necessary To The World, And Mankind Will Give You Bread.

The Whole Of Heraldry And Of Chivalry Is In Courtesy. A Man Of Fine Manners Shall Pronounce Your Name With All The Ornament That Titles Of Nobility Could Ever Add.

The Miracles Of Genius Always Rest On Profound Convictions Which Refuse To Be Analyzed.

Man Is The Will, And Woman The Sentiment. In This Ship Of Humanity, Will Is The Rudder, And Sentiment The Sail; When Woman Affects To Steer, The Rudder Is Only A Masked Sail.

There Is A Time In Every Man's Education When He Arrives At The Conviction That Envy Is Ignorance; That Imitation Is Suicide; That He Must Take Himself For Better, For Worse, As His Portion; That Though The Wide Universe Is Full Of Good, No Kernel Of Nourishing Corn Can Come To Him But Through His Toil Bestowed On That Plot Of Ground Which Is Given To Him To Till. The Power Which Resides In Him Is New In Nature, And None But He Knows What That Is Which He Can Do, Nor Does He Know Until He Has Tried.

Everything In Creation Has Its Appointed Painter Or Poet And Remains In Bondage Like The Princess In The Fairy Tale 'til Its Appropriate Liberator Comes To Set It Free.

Faith And Love Are Apt To Be Spasmodic In The Best Minds: Men Live On The Brink Of Mysteries And Harmonies Into Which Yet They Never Enter, And With Their Hand On The Doorlatch They Die Outside.

The Senses Collect The Surface Facts Of Matter... It Was Sensation; When Memory Came, It Was Experience; When Mind Acted, It Was Knowledge; When Mind Acted On It As Knowledge, It Was Thought.

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

The Effect Of The Indulgence Of Human Affection Is A Certain Cordial Exhilaration.

Wild Liberty Breeds Iron Conscience; Natures With Great Impulses Have Great Resources, And Return From Far.

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

But Every Jet Of Chaos Which Threatens To Exterminate Us Is Convertible By Intellect Into Wholesome Force. Fate Is Unpenetrated Causes.

The Flowering Of Civilization Is The Finished Man, The Man Of Sense, Of Grace, Of Accomplishment, Of Social Power--the Gentleman.

A Little Consideration Of What Takes Place Around Us Every Day Would Show Us That A Higher Law Than That Of Our Will Regulates Events; That Our Painful Labors Are Unnecessary And Fruitless; That Only In Our Easy, Simple, Spontaneous Action Are We Strong . . . . 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.

There Are Moods In Which We Court Suffering, In The Hope That Here, At Least, We Shall Find Reality, Sharp Peaks And Edges Of Truth. But It Turns Out To Be Scene-painting And Counterfeit. The Only Thing Grief Has Taught Me Is To Know How Shallow It Is.

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

Genius Borrows Nobly.

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.

It Is Rare To Find A Man Who Believes In His Own Thoughts Or Speaks That Which He Is Created To Say. As Nothing Astonishes Men So Much As Common Sense And Plain Dealing, So Nothing Is More Rare In Any Man Than An Act Of His Own...feel Yourself, And Be Not Daunted By Things...the Light By Which We See This World Comes Out From The Soul Of The Observer.

For, Whom The Muses Smile Upon, And Touch With Soft Persuasion, His Words Like A Storm-wind Can Bring Terror And Beauty On Their Wing; In His Every Syllable Lurketh Nature Veritable.

If You Tax Too High, The Revenue Will Yield Nothing.

Every Man Alone Is Sincere. At The Entrance Of A Second Person, Hypocrisy Begins

Society Does Not Love Its Unmaskers.

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.

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

Slavery Is An Institution For Converting Men Into Monkeys.

Nature May Be As Selfishly Studied As Trade. Astronomy To The Selfish Becomes Astrology; Psychology, Mesmerism (with Intent To Show Where Aour Spoons Are Gone); And Anatomy And Physiology Become Phrenology And Palmistry.

The True Ship Is The Ship Builder.

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.

I Find Nothing In Fables More Astonishing Than My Experience In Every Hour. One Moment Of A Man's Life Is A Fact So Stupendous As To Take The Luster Out Of Fiction.

The Religion Of One Age Is The Literary Entertainment Of The Next.

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

Every Man Should Let Out All The Length Of All The Reigns; Should Find Or Make A Frank And Healthy Expression Of What Force And Meaning Is In Him.

All Vigor Is Contagious.

The Worthless And Offensive Members Of Society, Whose Existence Is A Social Pest, Invariably Think Themselves The Most Ill-used People Alive, And Never Get Over Their Astonishment At The Ingratitude And Selfishness Of Their Contemporaries.

Nature Is Full Of Freaks, And Now Puts An Old Head On Young Shoulders, And Then Takes A Young Heart Heating Under Fourscore Winters.

If We Tire Of The Saints, Shakspeare Is Our City Of Refuge.

Happy The Man Who Never Puts On A Face, But Receives Every Visitor With That Countenance He Has On.

There Is Always Room For A Person Of Force And They Make Room For Many.

An Individual Is An Encloser. Time And Space, Liberty And Necessity, Truth And Thought, Are Left At Large No Longer.

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

Whatever You Do, You Need Courage. Whatever Course You Decide Upon, There Is Always Someone To Tell You That You Are Wrong.

There Are Not In The World At Any One Time More Than A Dozen Persons Who Read And Understand Plato:-never Enough To Pay For An Edition Of His Works; Yet To Every Generation These Come Duly Down, For The Sake Of Those Few Persons, As If God Brought Them Written In His Hand.

Then Climate Is A Great Impediment To Idle Persons; We Often Resolve To Give Up The Care Of The Weather, But Still We Regard The Clouds And The Rain.

What A Man Does, That He Has. What Has He To Do With Hope Or Fear? In Himself Is His Might. Let Him Regard No Good As Solid But That Which Is In His Nature, And Which Must Grow Out Of Him As Long As He Exists. The Goods Of Fortune May Come And Go Like Summer Leaves; Let Him Scatter Them On Every Wind As The Momentary Signs Of His Infinite Productiveness.

The Intellectual Man Requires A Fine Bait; The Sots Are Easily Amused. But Everybody Is Drugged With His Own Frenzy, And The Pageant Marches At All Hours, With Music And Banner And Badge.

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

The Sun Shines Today Also.

I Think I Have Done Well, If I Have Acquired A New Word From A Good Author; And My Business With Him Is To Find My Own, Though Itwere Only To Melt Him Down Into An Epithet Or An Image For Daily Use.

Knowledge Is When You Learn Something New Every Day. Wisdom Is When You Let Something Go Every Day.

All Things Are Known To The Soul.

Nothing Is At Last Sacred But The Integrity Of Your Own Mind.

The Laws Of Light And Of Heat Translate Each Other;-so Do The Laws Of Sound And Colour; And So Galvanism, Electricity And Magnetism Are Varied Forms Of This Selfsame Energy.

Some Thoughts Always Find Us Young, And Keep Us So. Such A Thought Is The Love Of The Universal And Eternal Beauty.

Universities Are Of Course Hostile To Geniuses, Which, Seeing And Using Ways Of Their Own, Discredit The Routine: As Churches And Monasteries Persecute Youthful Saints.

Not Gold But Only Men Can Makea People Great And Strong;men Who For Truth And Honors Sakestand Fast And Suffer Long. Brave Men Who Work While Others Sleep,who Dare While Others Flythey Build A Nations Pillars Deepand Lift Them To The Sky.

That Which Dominates Our Imagination And Our Thoughts Will Determine Our Life And Character.

Must We Always Talk For Victory, And Never Once For Truth, For Comfort, And Joy?

Comfort And Joy

The History Of The Genesis Or The Old Mythology Repeats Itself In The Experience Of Every Child. He Too Is A Demon Or God Thrown Into A Particular Chaos, Where He Strives Ever To Lead Things From Disorder Into Order.

If You Don't Ride In The Rain, You Don't Ride.

Riding Your Bike

The Land Is The Appointed Remedy For Whatever Is False And Fantastic In Our Culture...food For Our Mind, As Well As Our Body.

Each Age, It Is Found, Must Write Its Own Books; Or Rather, Each Generation For The Next Succeeding.

If We Live Truly, We Shall See Truly. It Is As Easy For The Strong Man To Be Strong, As It Is For The Weak To Be Weak.

In Every Society Some Men Are Born To Rule, And Some To Advise.

The World Is His Who Has Money To Go Over It.

All Ages Of Belief Have Been Great; All Of Unbelief Have Been Mean.

A Garden Is Like Those Pernicious Machineries Which Catch A Man's Coat-skirt Or His Hand, And Draw In His Arm, His Leg , And His Whole Body To Irresistible Destruction.

If With Love Thy Heart Has Burned; If Thy Love Is Unreturned; Hide Thy Grief Within Thy Breast, Though It Tear Thee Unexpressed.

The Spirit Of The World, The Great Calm Presence Of The Creator, Comes Not Forth To The Sorceries Of Opium Or Of Wine.

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.

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

Health Is The Condition Of Wisdom, And The Sign Is Cheerfulness, - An Open And Noble Temper.

The Preamble Of Thought, The Transition Through Which It Passes From The Unconscious To The Conscious, Is Action. Only So Much Do I Know, As I Have Lived. Instantly We Know Whose Words Are Loaded With Life, And Whose Not.

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

More Than The Diamond Koh-i-noor, Which Glitters Among Their Crown Jewels, They Prize The Dull Pebble Which Is Wiser Than A Man, Whose Poles Turn Themselves To The Poles Of The World, And Whose Axis Is Parallel To The Axis Of The World. Now, Their Toys Are Steam And Galvanism.

The Populace Drags Down The Gods To Their Own Level.

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.

There Is No True Orator Who Is Not A Hero.

The Frost Which Kills The Harvest Of A Year Saves The Harvest Of A Century, By Destroying The Weevil Or The Locust.

Enthusiasm Is One Of The Most Powerful Engines Of Success. When You Do A Thing, Do It With All Your Might.

Enthusiasm For Life

Society Everywhere Is In Conspiracy Against The Manhood Of Every One Of Its Members. The Virtue In Most Request Is Conformity. Self-reliance Is Its Aversion. It Loves Not Realities And Creators, But Names And Customs.

We Must Be Very Suspicious Of The Deceptions Of The Element Of Time. It Takes A Good Deal Of Time To Eat Or To Sleep, Or To Earn Ahundred Dollars, And A Very Little Time To Entertain A Hope And An Insight Which Becomes The Light Of Our Life.

Every Natural Fact Is A Symbol Of Some Spiritual Fact.

Between Cultivated Minds The First Interview Is The Best.

A Day Is A Miniature Eternity.

Jesus And Shakespeare Are Fragments Of The Soul, And By Love I Conquer And Incorporate Them In My Own Conscious Domain. His Virtue,--is Not That Mine? His Wit,--if It Cannot Be Made Mine, It Is Not Wit.

Since Everything In Nature Answers To A Moral Power, If Any Phenomenon Remains Brute And Dark, It Is That The Corresponding Faculty In The Observer Is Not Yet Active.

Genius Appeals To The Future.

Trust Your Instinct To The End, Though You Can Render No Reason.

The Power Of A Man Increases Steadily By Continuance In One Direction. He Becomes Acquainted With The Resistances And With His Own Tools; Increases His Skill And Strength And Learns The Favorable Moments And Favorable Accidents.

The Masters Painted For Joy, And Knew Not That Virtue Had Gone Out Of Them. They Could Not Paint The Like In Cold Blood. The Masters Of English Lyric Wrote Their Songs So. It Was A Fine Efflorescence Of Fine Powers.

Creative Force, Like A Musical Composer, Goes On Unweariedly Repeating A Simple Air Or Theme, Now High, Now Low, In Solo, In Chorus, Ten Thousand Times Reverberated, Till It Fills Earth And Heaven With The Chant.

A Man Of Good Sense But Of Little Faith, Whose Compassion Seemed To Lead Him To Church As Often As He Went There, Said To Me; 'that He Liked To Have Concerts, And Fairs, And Churches, And Other Public Amusements Go On.

Do What You're Afraid To Do.

Manners Are The Happy Ways Of Doing Things.

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