Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? 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. -NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS The distinction and end of a soundly constituted man is his labour. Use is inscribed on all his faculties. Use is the end to which he exists. As the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his work. A fruitless plant, an idle animal, does not stand in the universe. They are all toiling, however secretly or slowly, in the province assigned them, and to a use in the economy of the world; the higher and more complex organizations to higher and more catholic service. -FORTUNE OF REPUBLIC The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. + -NATURE As soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, one of the first questions which all wish to have ananswered is, How does that man get his living? And with reason. He is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is barbarous until every industrious man can get his living without dishonest customs. -WEALTH The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. . . . The man runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. + -CULTURE Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM. -SPIRITUAL LAWS Our aim is no less than greatness; that which invites all, belongs to us all,-to which we are all sometimes untrue, cowardly, faithless, but of which we never quite despair, and which, in every sane moment we resolve to make our own. -GREATNESS What is it that makes the true knight? Loyalty to his thought. + -ARISTOCRACY Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be a great will. If the thought is not a lamp to the will, does not proceed to an act, the wise are imbecile. He alone is strong and happy who has a will. The rest are herds. He uses; they are used. He is of the Maker; they are of the Made. Will is always miraculous, being the presence of God to men. When it appears in a man he is a hero, and all metaphysics are at fault. Heaven is the exercise of the faculties, the added sense of power. -NATURAL HISTORY OF THE INTELLECT It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation, that a man have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. -SPIRITUAL LAWS In this art of conversation, Woman, if not the queen and victor, is the lawgiver. . . . They are not only wise themselves, they make us wise. No one can be a master in conversation who has not learned much from women; their presence and inspiration are essential to its success. -SOCIAL AIMS Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. + -NATURE 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. Women are, by this and their social influence, the civilizers of mankind. What is civilization? I answer the power of good women. + -WOMAN The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity,but in being uninteresting. + -BEAUTY Genius looks forward; the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead; man hopes; genius creates. -THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR The schools of poets and philosophers are not more intoxicated with their symbols, than the populace with theirs. . . . The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics! + -THE POET Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition. + -LANDOR Dead languages, called dead because they can never die. -WOODBURY'S "TALKS WITH EMERSON" In dreams we are all poets. . . . Indeed, I doubt if the best poet has yet written any five-act play that can compare in thoroughness of invention with this unwritten play in fifty acts, composed by the dullest snorer on the floor of the watch-house. + -POETRY AND IMAGINATION In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. -SELF-RELIANCE I -NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into Truth, and you shall know why you believe. -INTELLECT Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief and misleading; so that presently all is wrong, talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for Art. + -THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed! + Man's life is a progress, not a station. -NATURE -COMPENSATION Today is a King in disguise. Today always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an uniform experience, that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank todays. Let us not be so deceived. Let us unmask the King as he passes. ... Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday. Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say, "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. . . . But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. -SELF-RELIANCE |