Emerson Quotes that I like
Our best thoughts come from others. Emerson
A short biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson
By his son
Edward W. Emerson
Edward Waldo Emerson (1844-1930)—the youngest child of
philosopher, lecturer, essayist, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and his second
wife Lidian (Jackson) Emerson—lived most of his life in Concord, Massachusetts.
As a child, he grew close to Henry David Thoreau, who
presided over the Emerson household as a live-in caretaker while Ralph Waldo
Emerson traveled in Europe in 1847 and 1848.
Edward attended Frank Sanborn’s progressive, coeducational
Concord private school. Rejected for service during the Civil War because of
fragile health, Edward went to college instead of war, graduating from Harvard
in 1866.
Although artistic, he bowed to practical considerations and
studied medicine. He spent a year in Berlin and London while enrolled at
Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated in 1874.
Back in Concord, he assisted Dr. Josiah Bartlett, eventually
taking over Bartlett’s practice. After his father’s death in 1882, Edward left
the practice of medicine and spent his time writing, editing his father’s
papers and manuscripts, and painting.
He wrote the Social
Circle biography of his father (1888), Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young
Friend (1917), and edited his father’s correspondence.
In 1874, Edward
married Concord girl Annie Shepard Keyes, daughter of John Shepard and Martha
(Prescott) Keyes. They had seven children, six of whom predeceased their
parents. Edward Emerson served Concord as Superintendent of Schools and on the
Board of Health, the Cemetery Committee, and the Library Committee.
A Brief Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Emersons first appeared in the north of England, but
Thomas, who landed in Massachusetts in 1638, came from Hertfordshire. He built
soon after a house, sometimes railed the Saint's Rest, which still stands in
Ipswich on the slope of Heart-break Hill, close by Labour-in-vain Creek.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the sixth in descent from him. He
was born in Boston, in Summer Street, May 25, 1803. He was the third son of
William Emerson, the minister of the First Church in Boston, whose father,
William Emerson, had been the patriotic minister of Concord at the outbreak of
the Revolution, and died a chaplain in the army. Ruth Haskins, the mother of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, was left a widow in 1811,with a family of five little
boys.
The taste of these boys was scholarly, and four of them went
through the Latin School to Harvard College, and graduated there. Their mother
was a person of great sweetness, dignity, and piety, bringing up her sons
wisely and well in very straitened circumstances, and loved by them. Her
husband's stepfather, Rev. Dr. Ripley of Concord, helped her, and constantly
invited the boys to the Old Manse, so that the woods and fields along
the Concord River were first a playground and then the
background of the dreams of their awakening imaginations.
Born in the city, Emerson's young mind first found delight
in poems and classic prose, to which his instincts led him as naturally as
another boy's would to go fishing, but his vacations in the country supplemented
these by giving him great and increasing love of nature.
In his early poems classic imagery is woven into pictures of
New England woodlands.
Even as a little boy he had the habit of attempting flights
of verse, stimulated by Milton, Pope, or Scott, and he and his mates took
pleasure in declaiming to each other in barns and attics. He was so full of
thoughts and fancies that he sought the pen instinctively, to jot them down.
At college Emerson did not shine as a scholar, though he won
prizes for essays and declamations, being especially unfitted for mathematical
studies, and enjoying the classics rather in a literary than grammatical way.
And yet it is doubtful whether any man in his class used his time to better
purpose with reference to his after life, for young Emerson's instinct led him
to wide reading of works, outside the curriculum, thatspoke directly to him.
He had already formed the habit of writing in a journal, not
the facts but the thoughts and inspirations of the day; often, also, good
stories or poetical quotations, and scraps of his own verse.
On graduation from Harvard in the class of 1821, following
the traditions of his family, Emerson resolved to study to be a minister and
meantime helped his older brother William in the support of the family by
teaching in a school for young ladies in Boston that the former had
successfully established. The principal was twenty-one and the assistant
nineteen years of age.
For school-teaching on the usual lines Emerson was not
fitted, and his youth and shyness prevented him from imparting his best gifts to
his scholars. Years later, when, in his age, his old scholars assembled to
greet him, he regretted that no hint had
been brought into the school of what at that very time "I was writing
every night in my chamber, my first thoughts on morals and the beautiful laws
of compensation, and of individual genius, which to observe and illustrate have
given sweetness to many years of my life."
Yet many scholars remembered his presence and teaching with
pleasure and
gratitude, not only in Boston, but in Chelmsford and
Roxbury, for while his younger brothers were in college it was necessary that
he should help. In these years, as through all his youth, he was loved, spurred
on in his intellectual life, and keenly
criticized by his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, an eager and wide reader, inspired
by religious zeal,high-minded, but eccentric.
The health of the young teacher suffered from too ascetic a
life, and unmistakable danger-signals began to appear, fortunately heeded in
time, but disappointment and delay resulted, borne, however, with sense and
courage. His course at the Divinity School in Cambridge was much broken;
nevertheless, in October, 1826, he was "approbated to preach" by the
Middlesex Association of Ministers.
A winter at the North at this time threatened to prove
fatal, so he was sent South by his helpful kinsman, Rev. Samuel Ripley, and
passed the winter in Florida with benefit,working northward in the spring,
preaching in the cities, and resumed his studies at Cambridge.
In 1829, Emerson was called by the Second or Old North
Church in Boston
to become the associate pastor with Rev. Henry Ware, and
soon after, because of his senior's delicate health, was called on to assume
the full duty. Theological dogmas, such as the Unitarian Church of Channing's day
accepted, did not appeal to Emerson, nor did the supernatural in religion in
its ordinary acceptation interest him.
The omnipresence of
spirit, the dignity of man, the daily miracle of the universe, were what he
taught, and while the older members of the congregation may have been
disquieted that he did not dwell on revealed religion, his words reached the
young people, stirred thought, and awakened aspiration. At this time he lived
with his mother and his young wife (Ellen Tucker) in Chardon Street.
For three years he ministered to his people in Boston. Then
having felt the shock of being obliged to conform to church usage, as stated
prayer when the spirit did not move, and especially the administration of the
Communion, he honestly laid his troubles before his people, and proposed to
them some modification of this rite.
While they considered his proposition, Emerson went into the
White Mountains to weigh his conflicting duties to his church and conscience.
He came down, bravely to meet the refusal of the church to change the rite, and
in a sermon preached in September, 1832, explained his objections to it, and,
because he could not honestly administer it, resigned.
He parted from his people in all kindness, but the wrench
was felt. His wife had recently died, he was ill himself, his life seemed to
others broken up. But meantime voices from far away had reached him. He sailed
for Europe, landed in Italy, saw cities, and art, and men, but would not stay
long.
Of the dead, Michael Angelo appealed chiefly to him there;
Landor among the living. He soon passed northward, making little stay in Paris,
but sought out Carlyle, then hardly recognized, and living in the lonely hills
of the Scottish Border. There began a friendship which had great influence on
the lives of both men, and lasted through life. He also visited Wordsworth. But
the new life before him called him home.
He landed at Boston within the year in good health and hope,
and joined his mother and youngest brother Charles in Newton. Frequent
invitations to preach still came, and were accepted, and he even was sounded as
to succeeding Dr. Dewey in the church at New Bedford; but, as he stipulated for
freedom from ceremonial, this came to nothing.
In the autumn of 1834 he moved to Concord, living with his
kinsman, Dr. Ripley, at the Manse, but soon bought house and land on the Boston
Road, on the edge of the village towards Walden woods. Thither, in the autumn,
he brought his wife. Miss Lidian Jackson, of Plymouth, and this was their home
during the rest of their lives.
The new life to which he had been called opened pleasantly
and increased in happiness and opportunity, except for the sadness of
bereavements, for, in the first few years, his brilliant brothers Edward and
Charles died, and soon afterward Waldo, his firstborn son, and later his
mother.
Emerson had left traditional religion, the city, the Old
World, behind, and now went to Nature as his teacher, his inspiration. His
first book, "Nature," which he was meditating while in Europe, was
finished here, and published in 1836. His practice during all his life in
Concord was to go alone to the woods almost daily, sometimes to wait there forhours,
and, when thus attuned, to receive the message to which he was to give voice.
Though it might be colored by him in transmission, he heldthat the light was
universal.
"Ever the words of the Gods resound,
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed that he may hear."
But he resorted, also, to the books of those who had handed
down the oracles truly, and was quick to find the message destined for him.
Men, too, he studied eagerly, the humblest and the highest, regretting always
that the brand of the scholar on him often silenced the men of shop and office
where he came.
He was everywhere a learner, expecting light from the
youngest and least educated visitor. The thoughts combined with the flower of
his reading were gradually grouped into lectures, and his main occupation
through life was reading these to who would hear, at first in courses in
Boston, but later all over the country, for the Lyceum sprang up in New England
in these years in every town, and spread westward to the new settlements even
beyond the Mississippi.
His winters were spent in these rough, but to him
interesting journeys, for he loved to watch the growth of the Republic in which
he had faith, and his summers were spent in study and writing. These lectures
were later severely pruned and revised, and the best of them gathered into
seven volumes of essaysunder different names between 1841 and 1876.
The courses in Boston, which at first were given in the Masonic
Temple, were always well attended by earnest and thoughtful people. The young,
whether in years or in spirit, were always and to the end his audience of the
spoken or written word. The freedom of the Lyceum platform pleased Emerson. He
found that people would hear on Wednesday with approval and unsuspectingly
doctrines from which on Sunday they felt officially obliged to dissent.
Mr. Lowell, in his essays, has spoken of these early
lectures and what they were worth to him and others suffering from the generous
discontent of youth with things as they were. Emerson used to say, "My
strength and my doom is to be solitary;" but to a retired scholar a
wholesome offset to this was the travelling and lecturing in cities and in raw
frontier towns, bringing him into touch with the people, and this he knew and
valued.
In 1837 Emerson gave the Phi Beta Kappa oration in
Cambridge, The American Scholar, which increased his growing reputation, but
the following year his Address to the Senior Class at the Divinity School
brought out, even from the friendly Unitarians, severe strictures and warnings
against its dangerous doctrines. Of this heresy Emerson said:
"I deny personality to God because it is too little,
not too much."
He really strove to elevate the idea of God. Yet those who
were pained or shocked by his teachings respected Emerson. His lectures were
still in demand; he was often asked to speak by literary societies at orthodox
colleges. He preached regularly at East Lexington until 1838, but thereafter
withdrew from the ministerial office.
At this time the progressive and spiritually minded young
people used to meet for discussion and help in Boston, among them George
Ripley, Cyrus Bartol, James Freeman Clarke, Alcott, Dr. Hedge, Margaret Fuller,
and Elizabeth Peabody. Perhaps from this gathering of friends, which Emerson
attended, came what is called the Transcendental Movement, two results of which
were the Brook Farm Community and the Dial magazine, in which last Emerson took
great interest, and was for the time an editor.
Many of these friends were frequent visitors in Concord.
Alcott moved thither
after the breaking up of his school. Hawthorne also came to
dwell there. Henry Thoreau, a Concord youth, greatly interested Emerson;
indeed, became for a year or two a valued inmate of his home, and helped
and instructed him in the labors of the
garden and little farm, which gradually grew to ten acres, the chief interest
of which for the owner
was his trees, which he loved and tended. Emerson helped
introduce his countrymen to the teachings of Carlyle, and edited his works
here, where they found more readers than at home.
In 1847 Emerson was invited to read lectures in England, and
remained abroad a year, visiting France also in her troublous times. English
Traits was a result. Just before this journey he had collected and published
his poems. A later volume, called May Day, followed in 1867.
He had written verses from childhood, and to the purified
expression of poetry he, through life, eagerly aspired. He said, "I like
my poems best because it is not I who write them." In 1866 the degree of
Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by Harvard University, and he was chosen an
Overseer. In 1867 he again gave the Phi Beta Kappa oration, and in 1870 and
1871 gave courses in Philosophy in the University Lectures at Cambridge.
Emerson was not merely a man of letters. He recognized and
did the private and public duties of the hour. He exercised a wide hospitality
to souls as well as bodies. Eager youths came to him for rules, and went away
with light. Reformers, wise and unwise, came to him, and were kindly received.
They were often disappointed that they could not harness him to their partial
and transient scheme.
He said, My reforms include theirs: I must go my way; help
people by my strength, not by my weakness. But if a storm threatened, he felt
bound to appear and show his colors. Against the crying evils of his time he
worked bravely in his own way. He wrote to President Van Buren against the
wrong done to the Cherokees, dared speak against the idolized Webster, when he
deserted the cause of Freedom, constantly spoke of the iniquity of slavery,
aided with speech and money the Free State cause in Kansas,was at Phillips's
side at the antislavery meeting in 1861 broken up by the Boston mob, urged
emancipation during the war.
He enjoyed his Concord home and neighbors, served on the
school committee for years, did much for the Lyceum, and spoke on the town's
great occasions. He went to all town-meetings, oftener to listen and admire
than to speak, and always took pleasure and pride in the people. In return he
was respected and loved by them.
Emerson's house was destroyed by fire in 1872, and the
incident exposure and fatigue did him harm. His many friends insisted on
rebuilding his house and sending him abroad to get well. He went up the Nile,
and revisited England, finding old and new friends, and, on his return, was
welcomed and escorted home by the people of Concord. After this time he was
unable to write. His old age was quiet and happy among his family and friends.
He died in April, 1882.
EDWARD W. EMERSON.
January, 1899.
On achievement
Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.
On Americans
I find that the Americans have no passions they have
appetites.
On Actions
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.
On anger
One ought never to turn One's back On a threatened danger
and try to run away from it. If you do that you will double the danger. But if
you meet it promptly and without flinching you will reduce the danger by half.
Never run away from anything. Never!
As soon as there is life there is danger.
The wise man in the storm prays to God not for safety from
danger but for deliverance from fear.
On adventure
The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a
war a crusade a gold mine a new country speak to the imagination and offer
swing and play to the confined powers.
On action (Taking action)
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All
life is an experiment.
Act if you like but you do it at your peril. Men's actions
are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the
victim and slave of his action.
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness the fine
practical understanding of the English and the American adventure; but it has a
certain probity which never rests in a superficial performance but asks
steadily To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
Let us if we must have great actions make our own so. All
action is of infinite elasticity and the least admits of being inflated with
celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon.
Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has
acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
The ancestor of every action is thought.
Real action is in silent moments.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the
property of every individual in it.
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit
behind it.
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?
A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.
On autobiographies (Life reflections see also “On
biography”)
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.
On adversity (Facing adversity)
Out of love and hatred out of earnings and borrowings and
leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping;
out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and
contempt comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in
One's own sunshine
A man is a god in ruins.
On affection
The moment we indulge our affections the earth is
metamorphosed there is no winter and no night; all tragedies all ennui s vanish
all duties even.
On age and aging
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to
count.
Nature is full of freaks and now puts an old head on young
shoulders and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.
On ability
People with great gifts are easy to find but symmetrical and
balanced Ones never.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to
outgrow small Ones.
On achievement
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make
you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you
could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as
you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a
spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
On assistance
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is
in some danger of being bitten.
On alcohol
There is this to be said in favor of drinking that it takes
the drunkard first out of society then out of the world.
On ambition
Without ambition One starts nothing. Without work one
finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man
who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be
his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some but principles are
few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The
man who tries methods ignoring principles is sure to have trouble.
On amusement
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.
On ancestry
Good breeding a union of kindness and independence.
On angels
The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in
heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical
dialects of men but speak their own whether there be any who understand it or
not.
On art
His heart was as great as the world but there was no room in
it to hold the memory of a wrong.
Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that
incessantly draw great events.
The arts and
inventions of each period are only its costume and do not invigorate men.
The true poem is the poet's mind.
Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us
manners and abolishing hurry.
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work
of art.
New arts destroy the old.
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art
bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for
painting poetry music architecture or philosophy he makes a bad husband and an
ill provider.
Art is the path of the creator to his work.
Each work of art excludes the world concentrates attention
On itself. For the time it is the Only thing worth doing --to do just that; be
it a sonnet a statue a landscape an outline head of Caesar or an oration.
Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as
did the first for example a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in
life but laying out a garden.
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the
adventurer after years of strife has nothing broader than his shoes.
Every artist was first an amateur.
Artists must be sacrificed to their art.
On anger
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is
the rule.
We boil at different degrees.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of
happiness.
On animals
Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection
we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?
On anxiety
Some of your grief you have cured and lived to survive; but
what torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived.
On appearance
'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact
indication of his rank in the immense scale of men and we are always learning
to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
On attitude
To different minds the same world is a hell and a heaven.
B
On babies
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.
On beauty
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no
superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all
things; which is the mean of many extremes.
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
Beauty rests on necessities.
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love but
for pleasure it degrades the seeker.
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.
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a
higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.
On beginnings
The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.
On belief
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul;
unbelief in denying them.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears
apples.
All the great ages have been ages of belief.
On bereavement
The death of a dear friend wife brother lover which seemed
nothing but privation somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius;
for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life terminates an epoch of
infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed breaks up a wonted
occupation or a household or style of living and allows the formation of new
Ones more friendly to the growth of character.
On bigotry and indifference
Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by
indifference.
On biography
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
There is properly no history; only biography.
On Books (classics)
There are books which take rank in your life with parents
and lovers and passionate experiences so medicinal so stringent so
revolutionary so authoritative.
On books – (reading)
If we encounter a man of rare intellect we should ask him
what books he reads.
Never read any book that is not a year old.
Our high respect for a well-read person is praise enough for
literature.
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.
'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book
he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else
and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the
sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine
until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we
will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
On bragging
If I cannot brag of knowing something then I brag of not
knowing it; at any rate brag.
There is also this benefit in brag that the speaker is
unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means draw it all out
and hold him to it.
On business
Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.
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.
C
On children
There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to
get him asleep.
The child with his sweet pranks the fool of his senses
commanded by every sight and sound without any power to compare and rank his
sensations abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip to a lead dragon or a
gingerbread dog individualizing everything generalizing nothing delighted with
every new thing lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue which this day of
continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with
the curly dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty and has secured the
symmetrical growth of the bodily frame by all these attitudes and exertions
--an end of the first importance which could not be trusted to any care less
perfect than her own.
On choice
Trust your instinct to the end though you can render no reason.
We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he
selects as by what he originates.
On criticism
Manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant and
the sense of our author is as broad as the world.
On calamity
Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
On censorship
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every
suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
On change
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are
unsettled that there is any hope for them.
On character
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be
strong to live as well as think.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is
also a confession of character.
That which we call character is a reserved force which acts
directly by presence and without means. It is conceived of as a certain
undemonstrable force a familiar or genius by whose impulses the man is guided
but whose counsels he cannot impart.
Make the most of yourself for that is all there is of you.
Gross and obscure natures however decorated seem impure
shambles; but character gives splendor to youth and awe to wrinkled skin and
gray hairs.
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read
it forward backward or across it still spells the same thing.
On charity
Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and
prosperity and you need not give alms.
Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good
situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I
grudge the dollar the dime the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me
and to whom I do not belong.
On cheerfulness
So of cheerfulness or a good temper the more it is spent the
more it remains.
On civilization
As long as our civilization is essentially One of property
of fences of exclusiveness it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will
leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn
our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open and
which serves all men.
Sunday is the core of our civilization dedicated to thought
and reverence.
Civilization depends on morality.
On college
One of the benefits of a college education is to show the
boy its little avail.
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.
The colleges while they provide us with libraries furnish no
professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.
On comedy
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other
men a pledge of sanity and a protection from those perverse tendencies and
gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue
alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost his
fellow-men can do little for him.
On commitment
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of
adding a second a third and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a
man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely
the value of your first.
On common sense
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain
dealing.
On communication
When the eyes say one thing and the tongue another a
practiced man relies On the language of the first.
On compensation
For everything you have missed you have gained something
else; and for everything you gain you lose something else.
On complaints
There is One topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred
to all rational mortals namely their distempers. If you have not slept or if
you have slept or if you have headache or sciatica or leprosy or thunder-stroke
I beseech you by all angels to hold your peace and not pollute the morning.
On conceit
Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt on the
principle If you will not lend me the money how can I pay you?
On conflict
We know better than we do. We do not yet possess
ourselves...
We are the prisoners of ideas.
On conformity
One lesson we learn early that in spite of seeming
difference men are all of One pattern. We readily assume this with our mates
and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature and that their
watches are slower than ours. In fact the only sin which we never forgive in
each other is difference of opinion.
On consequences
All successful men have agreed in One thing -- they were
causationists. They believed that things went not by luck but by law; that
there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and
last of things.
On conservatives
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have
been effeminated by position or nature born halt and blind through luxury of
their parents and can Only like invalids act On the defensive.
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.
On consistency
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
On consultants
In every society some men are born to rule and some to
advise.
On contradiction
Wise men are not wise at all hours and will speak five times
from their taste or their humor to Once from their reason.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I
am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
On control
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and
valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself so we gain the strength of the
temptation we resist.
Nothing external to you has any power over you.
On conventionality
He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.
On conversation
Things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say
things. What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot
hear what you say to the contrary.
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.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for
competitors.
On country
Shall we then judge a country by the majority or by the
minority? By the minority surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the
census or by square miles of land or other than by their importance to the mind
of the time.
On courage
Courage charms us because it indicates that a man loves an
idea better than all things in the world that he is thinking neither of his bed
nor his dinner nor his money but will venture all to put in act the invisible
thought of his mind.
Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the
thing before.
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully the
world and takes him boldly by the beard he is often surprised to find it comes
off in his hand and that it was Only tied On to scare away the timid
adventurers.
Whatever you do you need courage. Whatever course you decide
upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always
difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map
out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same
courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories but it takes brave men
and women to win them.
What a new face courage puts On everything!
Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.
On courtesy
We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture
which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.
Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time
for courtesy.
On crafts
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to
invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to
conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.
On creativity
That which builds is better than that which is built.
On creeds
As men's prayers are a disease of the will so are their
creeds a disease of the intellect.
On crime and criminals
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a
fruit that unsuspected ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed
it.
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
On criticism
Blame is safer than praise.
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting all knife and
root-puller but guiding instructive inspiring.
On culture
Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
On curiosity
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
On curses
Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them.
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself
around your own.
On cynics and cynicism
Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and
moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.
Don't waste yourself in rejection or bark against the bad but chant the beauty
of the good.
A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
D
On debt
It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy that
the world owes the world more than the world can pay.
On decisions
Once you make a decision the universe conspires to make it
happen.
On dependence
The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a
wooden rudder.
On desire
There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of
a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the
creature that feel it.
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve
them One's self?
On destiny
Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you
reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you
reap a destiny.
Fate then is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire
of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.
On diets
'Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made
at last of the same chemical atoms.
On difficulties
When it is dark enough you can see the stars.
There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to
believe your critics are right.
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money
not scarce?
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a
good learner would not miss.
On disasters
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the
understanding also after long intervals of time. A fever a mutilation a cruel
disappointment a loss of wealth a loss of friends seems at the moment unpaid
loss and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that
underlies all facts.
On discipline
Self-command is the main discipline.
On discovery
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.
On disease
All diseases run into one. Old age.
On action
There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of
the rich who wants something more; that of the sick who wants something
different; and that of the traveler who says anywhere but here.
On dress
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the
lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a
feeling of inward tranquility which religi0n is powerless to bestow.
On drugs
Tobacco and opium have broad backs and will cheerfully carry
the load of armies if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they
give and such harm as they do.
On duty
Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too
much or dare too much.
E
On evolution
Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.
If there is any period one would desire to be born in is it
not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and
admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and
by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich
possibilities of the new era?
On economy and economics
Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and
few can play well.
On education
I pay the schoolmaster but it is the school boys who educate
my son.
Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not
on his solitude.
The secret in education lies in respecting the student.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at
the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.
We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for
ten or fifteen years and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not
know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education
but the means of education.
On egotism
The pest of society are the egotist they are dull and bright
sacred and profane course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on
all constitutions.
On eloquence
The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker but who is
inwardly drunk with a certain belief.
On empire
An empire is an immense egotism.
On energy
Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the
tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting
itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of
mankind their secret that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile and
coal carries coal by rail and by boat to make Canada as warm as Calcutta and
with its comfort brings its industrial power.
On enthusiasm
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the
world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved
without it.
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning not to be measured by
the horse-power of the understanding.
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort and without it nothing
great was ever achieved.
On envy
Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.
On equality
Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality
today and it will appear again tomorrow.
On exaggeration
There is no One who does not exaggerate!
'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
On example
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.
On excellence
There is always a best way of doing everything.
On exercise
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are
endurance plain clothes old shoes an eye for nature good humor vast curiosity
good speech good silence and nothing too much.
Intellectual tasting
of life will not supersede muscular activity.
On expectation
How much of human life is lost in waiting.
On experience
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of
innumerable minds.
The more experiments you make the better.
On extra mile
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man
accompanies it.
On eyes
The eye is easily frightened.
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
F
On faces
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for
the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history and his
wants.
On facts
If a man will kick a
fact out of the window when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney
corner.
Every fact is related on one side to sensation and on the
other two 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 underside.
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of
facts.
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply
experiment an endless seeker with no past at my back.
On faith
Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those
brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all
other experiences.
All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all
I have not seen.
The course of everything goes to teach us faith.
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
On fame
Fame is proof that the people are gullible.
On familiarity
The hues of the opal the light of the diamond are not to be
seen if the eye is too near.
On farming and farmers
The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility
rests on the possession and use of land.
On fate
Whatever limits us we call fate.
If you believe in fate believe in it at least for your good.
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of
existence.
On faults
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.
On fear
Fear defeats more people than any other One thing in the
world.
Fear always springs from ignorance.
Do the thing we fear and the death of fear is certain.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
On finance
We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did
with their surplus capital.
On flowers
Earth laughs in flowers.
Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty
out-values all the utilities of the world.
On focus
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics in war
in trade in short in all the management of human affairs.
The only prudence in life is concentration.
On food and eating
I can reason down or deny everything except this perpetual
Belly: feed he must and will and I cannot make him respectable.
Let the stoics say what they please we do not eat for the
good of living but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.
On fortune
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them
the fruit of his character.
On freedom
Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made
difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.
For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom
fail?
So far as a person thinks; they are free.
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.
On friends and friendship
Go oft to the house of thy friend for weeds choke the unused
path.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
We talk of choosing our friends but friends are self-elected
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare And
he who has One enemy will meet him everywhere.
Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables.
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him
I may think aloud.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can
afford to be stupid with them.
The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand nor
the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual
inspiration that comes to One when he discovers that someone else believes in
him and is willing to trust him.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
A day for toil an hour for sport but for a friend is life
too short.
The Only way to have a friend is to be one.
I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would
have them where I can find them but I seldom use them.
I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
On funerals
The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.
G
On generosity
It is always so pleasant to be generous though very
vexatious to pay debts.
On genius
Only an inventor knows how to borrow and every man is or
should be an inventor.
The greatest genius is the most indebted person.
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking
tongue; and no genius can often utter anything which is not invited and gladly
entertained by men around him.
To believe your own thought to believe that what is true for
you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.
When Nature has work to be done she creates a genius to do
it.
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Coffee is good for talent but genius wants prayer.
Accept your genius and say what you think.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius.
His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
On gentlemen
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman --
repose in energy.
On gifts
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
On goals
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect still sigh
and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
On God
'Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low
disguises.
The dice of God are always loaded.
There is a crack in everything God has made.
On evil
Them meaning of good and bad of better and worse is simply
helping or hurting.
On goodness
It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.
On government
The less government we have the better.
On gratitude
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends
the old and new.
On greatness
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Not he is great who can alter matter but he who can alter my
state of mind.
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is
enough.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men
around to his opinion twenty years later.
The search after the great men is the dream of youth and the
most serious occupation of manhood.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
A great man stands On God. A small man on a great man.
Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger
than any material force that thoughts rule the world.
He is great who is what he is from nature and who never
reminds us of others.
On guests
My evening visitors if they cannot see the clock should find
the time in my face.
H
On heaven
Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.
On happiness
To fill the hour -- that is happiness.
I look on that man as happy who when there is question of
success looks into his work for a reply.
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone
without getting some On yourself.
On health
Health is the condition of wisdom and the sign is cheerfulness
-- an open and noble temper.
Give me health and a day and I will make the pomp of
emperors ridiculous.
On heroes and heroism
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency.
All men have wandering impulses fits and starts of generosity. But when you
have resolved to be great abide by yourself and do not weakly try to reconcile
yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common nor the common the
heroic.
On heroes and heroism
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is braver
five minutes longer.
Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always
right.
On history and historians
Our best history is still poetry.
On honor
The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our
spo0ns.
On humankind
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually
die of civilizati0n.
On humor
There is this benefit in brag that the speaker is
unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out
and hold him to it.
On hypocrisy
At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins.
I
On Illusion
The most dangerous thing is illusion.
On ideas
We are pris0ners of ideas.
It is a less0n which all history teaches wise men to put
trust in ideas and not in circumstances.
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and
brave men or they are no better than dreams.
On idleness
There is no prosperity trade art city or great material
wealth of any kind but if you trace it home you will find it rooted in a
thought of some individual man. --
That man is idle who can do something better.
On imagination
What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the
interior energy; Only the precursor of the reason.
The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
We live by our imagination our admiration s and our
sentiments.
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which
vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health
of everyone.
On imitation
Imitation is suicide.
On immortality
Higher than the question of our duration is the question of
our deserving. Immortality will come too such as are fit for it and he would be
a great soul in future must be a great soul now.
On impossibility
Every man is an impossibility until he is born.
On individuality
Our expenses are all for conformity.
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he
becomes a conformist.
On influence
Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?
The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left
their presence.
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world
alters the world.
On inheritance
Of course money will do after its kind and will steadily
work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.
On inspiration
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost by virtue or
by vice by friend or by fiend by prayer or by wine.
On instinct
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.
On institutions
An institution is the lengthened shadow of One man.
On integrity
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own
mind.
In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep
their integrity.
On intelligence and intellectuals
Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free.
A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.
If a man's eye is On the Eternal his intellect will grow.
One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
On intervention
Everything intercepts us from ourselves.
On intuition
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts
and there abide the huge world will come round to him.
On invention and inventor
Man is a shrewd inventor and is ever taking the hint of a
new machine from his own structure adapting some secret of his own anatomy in
iron wood and leather to some required function in the work of the world.
K
On kindness
You cannot do a kindness too soon for you never know how
soon it will be too late.
On kings
If you shoot at a king you must kill him.
On knowledge
I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be
created not by compulsion but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The
wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the
attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools not
for the college; for boys not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a
professor.
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Knowledge is the only elegance.
Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and
there is no knowledge that is not power.
L
On language
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English
speech the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.
On life
Cities force growth and make people talkative and
entertaining but they also make them artificial.
Cities give us collision. 'Tis said London and New York take
the nonsense out of a man.
The city is recruited from the country.
On love
A low self-love in
the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.
On language
Language is the archives of history.
Language is a city to the building of which every human
being brought a stone.
On law and lawyers
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
On law and lawyers
The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.
The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand
which perishes in the twisting.
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.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and
bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is
what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.
On leadership
Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what
we can.
The measure of a great leader is their success in bringing
everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.
The first thing a great person does is make us realize the
insignificance of circumstance.
We are reformers in the spring and summer but in autumn we
stand by the old. Reformers in the morning and conservers at night.
On learning
In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him
and in that I am his pupil.
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.
The years teach us much the days never knew.
The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and
pale their feet are cold their heads are hot the night is without sleep the day
a fear of interruption --pallor squalor hunger and egotism.
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
On libraries
A man's library is a sort of harem.
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what
you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is What it
will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes and
your ears and your curiosity and turn you inside out or outside in.
Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty
to accept the views which Cicero which Locke which Bacon have given forgetful
that Cicero Locke and Bacon were Only young men in libraries when they wrote
these books. Hence instead of Man Thinking we have the book-worm.
On lies and lying
Every violation of truth is not Only a sort of suicide in
the liar but is a stab at the health of human society.
On life
The life of man is the true romance which when it is
valiantly conduced will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
If we live truly we shall see truly.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be
understood.
Life too near paralyses art.
Like bees they must put their lives into the sting they
give.
Live let live and help live
Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your
life.
It is not length of life but depth of life.
On light
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul
that intense light will not make it beautiful.
On literature
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
When the mind is braced by labor and invention the page of whatever book we
read becomes luminous with
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so
pleased with the bad.
On loneliness
Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.
On love
All mankind loves a lover.
The power of love as the basis of a State has never been
tried.
Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just
as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser sees newly
every time he looks at the object beloved drawing from it with his eyes and his
mind those virtues which it possesses.
On luck
There is no chance and no anarchy in the universe. All is
system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong
people believe in cause and effect.
M
On machinery
By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a
shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the
system of the universe of Uriel the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads
a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can
recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge and every
creature civil or savage or brute has involuntarily dropped of its existence;
and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his
perception of laws of nature.
On manners
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
Manners are the happy way of doing things; each Once a
stroke of genius or of love --now repeated and hardened into usage. They form
at last a rich varnish with which the routine of life is washed and its details
adorned. If they are superficial so are the dewdrops which give such depth to
the morning meadows.
Manners require time and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
The basis of good manners is self-reliance.
There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor
as the simple and awful sculpture On the friezes of the Parthenon and the
remains of the earliest Greek art.
On marriage
Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged from the
beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out and
such as are out wish to get in?
The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms
of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her but she
cannot be heaven if she stoops to One such as he!
On art
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a
tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by
the bystanders.
On masses
The masses have no habit of self- reliance or original
action.
Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 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.
On men
Men are what their mothers made them.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.
On women
Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they
were real: perhaps they are.
On mentors
My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I
can.
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we
have broken any idols it is through a transfer of idolatry.
On mind
He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his
own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.
We cannot see things
that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.
On minorities
Shall we judge a country by the majority or by the minority?
By the minority surely.
All history is a record of the power of minorities and of
minorities of One.
On mobs
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.
On money
The world is his who has money to go over it.
Money often costs too much.
Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or
other commodity. It is so much warmth so much bread.
It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of
caution to make a great fortune and when you have it requires ten times as much
skill to keep it.
Money which represents the prose of life and which is hardly
spoken of in parlors without an apology is in its effects and laws as beautiful
as roses.
On morality
The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion
and morality.
On motivation
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.
On murder
Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets
and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him or fright him from his
ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.
On music
Music causes us to think eloquently.
N
On nature
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very
few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
A man is related to all nature.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the
same.
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself
shall not be defended.
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature.
Everything is made of hidden stuff.
In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.
The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps and is Nature.
On nature
We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite
nature.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind
the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Nature... She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea and her
nay nay
On necessity
Make yourself necessary to somebody.
By necessity by proclivity and by delight we all . In fact
it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Necessity does everything well.
We do what we must and call it by the best names.
On nicknames
No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.
O
On obedience
The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the
mud at the bottom of our eye.
On obstacles
As long as a man stands in his own way everything seems to
be in his way.
On opinions
Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's
opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
The Only sin that we never forgive in each other is a
difference in opinion.
On opportunity
Be an opener of doors.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is
beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it
in every fair face in every fair sky in every fair flower and thank God for it
as a cup of blessing.
If a man can write a better book preach a better sermon or
make a better mousetrap than his neighbor though he build his house in the
woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Every wall is a door.
On opposites
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
P
On parents and parenting
Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast
his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past?
On power
The education of the will is the object of our existence.
On passion
Passion though a bad regulator is a powerful spring.
On patience
Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.
On peace
Peace cannot be achieved through violence it can only be
attained through understanding.
Peace has its victories but it takes brave men and women to
win them.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing but the
triumph of principles.
On people
The people are to be taken in small doses.
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.
Each man seeks those of different quality from his own and such as are good of
their kind; that is he seeks other men and the rest.
It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied
with cheap performance you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what
is good and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from
time to time in history men are born a whole age too soon.
On performance
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to
cheat nature to make water run up hill to twist a rope of sand.
On perseverance
By persisting in your path though you forfeit the little you
gain the great.
On persuasion
That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say; even
though we may repeat the words ever so often.
On philanthropists
The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to
preserve are not worth preserving.
On philosophers and philosophy
Out of Plato come all things that are still written and
debated about among men of thought.
On plagiarism
Genius Borrows nobly.
On planning
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end
requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.
Few people have any next they live from hand to mouth
without a plan and are always at the end of their line.
On pleasure
Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.
On poetry and poets
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was
Once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.
Only poetry inspires poetry.
Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking
painting.
Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry and
every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
On politics
There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest
ground of politics for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.
On population
If government knew
how I should like to see it check not multiply the population. When it reaches
its true law of action every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
On possessions
Some men are born to own and can animate all their
possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a
compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.
On possibilities
We have more than we use.
The power which resides in man is new in nature and none but
he knows what that is which he can do nor does he know until he has tried.
Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.
Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you if you
but knew what you are.
On poverty and the poor
Poverty consists in feeling poor.
The greatest man in history was the poorest.
The creation of a thousand forest in one acorn.
On power
Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to
do easily some feat impossible to any other.
The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.
A good indignation brings out all One's powers.
Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do
not the thing had not the power.
Wherever there is power there is age.
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in
comparison to what lies inside of you.
There is no knowledge that is not power.
On praise
When I was praised I lost my time for instantly I turned
around to look at the work I had thought slightly of and that day I made
nothing new.
Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.
On preachers and preaching
Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to
the duties of life.
The good rain like a bad preacher does not know when to
leave off.
On present
Today is a king in disguise.
Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to
those who live to the present.
Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and
future worlds.
Finish each day before you begin the next and interpose a
solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
On presidents
The President has paid dear for his White House. It has
commonly cost him all his peace and the best of his manly attributes. To
preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world he is
content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.
On progress
The walking of Man is falling forwards.
On progress
All our progress is an unfolding like a vegetable bud. You
have first an instinct then an opinion then a knowledge as the plant has root
bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end though you can render no reason.
On promises
All promise outruns performance.
On property
No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little
arithmetic also.
If a man owns land the land owns him.
Property is an intellectual production. The game requires
coolness right reasoning promptness and patience in the players.
On purpose
I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a
sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose...
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to
another aim.
On pursuit
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit
which finds him employment and happiness whether it be to make baskets or
broadswords or canals or statues or songs.
Q
On quality
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees
they must put their lives into the sting they give.
On quotations
The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself is to
one.
The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until
an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first r 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 d east and west.
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater
delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
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.
Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use
them to express my thought. Yes because I perceive that we have heard the same
truth but they have heard it better.
R
On radicals
The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and
aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is
destructive Only out of hatred and selfishness.
On reality
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
On reform
Every reform was Once a private opinion and when it shall be
a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.
On rejection
Dear to us are those
who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy for they add
another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed and
thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit and urge us
to new and unattempted performances.
On religion
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and
commits suicide.
On respectability
Men are respectable only as they respect.
On riches
Man was born to be rich or grow rich by use of his faculties
by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production.
The game requires coolness right reasoning promptness and patience in the
players.
On risk
I dip my pen in the blackest ink because I am not afraid of
falling into my inkpot.
On rumors
We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of
wrath past and to come.
On recognition
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in
the world is the highest applause.
S
On sympathy
Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere and in it we unfold
easily and well.
On safety
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
On scholars and scholarship
I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.
The office of the scholar is to cheer to raise and to guide
men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow unhonored and
unpaid task of observation. He is the world's eye.
On science
What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former
men believed in magic by which temples cities and men were swallowed up and all
trace of them gone. We are coming On the secret of a magic which sweeps out of
men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held
and were framed upon.
Do what we can summer will have its flies.
On sea
The sea washing the equator and the poles offers its
perilous aid and the power and empire that follow it... Beware of me it says
but if you can hold me I am the key to all the lands.
On security
No One has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three
words can't dishearten it.
Nothing is secure but life transition the energizing spirit.
On self-esteem
Whatever games are played with us we must play no games with
ourselves.
It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the
world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is
he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence
of solitude.
It is easy to live for others everybody does. I call on you
to live for yourselves.
On self-expression
Insist On yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can
present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation;
but of the adopted talent of another you have0Only an extemporaneous half
possession.
On self-improvement
The never-ending task of self-improvement.
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.
For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet all honors crown all
eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he
did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him
because he held On his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him
because men hated him.
On self-reliance
This gives force to the strong -- that the multitude have no
habit of self-reliance or original action.
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own
spine.
No One can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and
creators but names and customs.
On self-respect
Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his
feet. Let him not peep or steal or skulk up and down with the air of a
charity-boy a bastard or an interloper.
On sacrifice
Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the
reported miracles grow.
On self-trust
Self-trust is the first secret to success.
On time
Society is infested by persons who seeing that the
sentiments please counterfeit the expression of them. These we call
sentimentalists--talkers who mistake the description for the thing saying for
having.
On service
He is great who confers the most benefits.
No man can help another without helping himself.
On silence
Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
On simplicity
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed to be simple
is to be great.
It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in
the simplest way.
On sin
That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.
On sincerity
Every man alone is
sincere. At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins.
Sincerity is the luxury allowed like diadems and authority
Only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a
second person hypocrisy begins.
Sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay
On skepticism
Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.
On sky
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
On slavery
Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
On society
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it
gains on the other. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.
Society is a hospital of incurables.
Society always
consists in the greatest part of young and foolish persons.
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.
Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real
character and reveals it by hiding.
On solitude
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in
the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude.
Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.
We walk alone in the world.
We never touch but at points.
Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the
school of genius.
On sorrow
Sorrow makes us children again.
The Only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it
is.
Sorrow makes us all children again destroys all differences
of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.
On soul
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.
The soul's emphasis is always right.
On speakers and speaking
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an
audience is electrified.
On speech
Speech is power: speech is to persuade to convert to compel.
It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
On spirituality
The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.
On spontaneity
Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot with
your best deliberation and heed come so close to any question as your
spontaneous glance shall bring you.
On state
The State must follow and not lead the character and
progress of the citizen.
On strength
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
There is always room for a person of force and they make
room for many.
On stupidity
The key to the age may be this or that or the other as the
young orators describe; the key to all ages is -- Imbecility; imbecility in the
vast majority of men at all times and even in heroes in all but certain eminent
moments; victims of gravity custom and fear.
On success
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent
people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest
critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find
the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even One life has
breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an
element of success.
A strenuous soul hates cheap success.
If man has good corn or wood or boards or pigs to sell or
can make better chairs or knives crucibles or church organs than anybody else
you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house though it be in the woods.
There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat
grind paint and work like a digger On the railroad all day and every day.
On snow
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky arrives the snow.
On sailing
The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the
most.
T
On talent
Every man has his own vocation talent is the call.
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man
behind the book; a personality which by birth and quality is pledged to the
doctrines there set forth and which exists to see and state things so and not
otherwise.
Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent
working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new
power as a benefactor.
Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.
On talkativeness
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
On taste
A man is known by the books he reads by the company he keeps
by the praise he gives by his dress by his tastes by his distastes by the
stories he tells by his gait by the notion of his eye by the look of his house
of his chamber; for nothing On earth is solitary but everything hath affinities
infinite.
On taxes and taxation
Every advantage has its tax.
The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
On teachers
Knowledge exists to be imparted.
On temper
Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
On temptation
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
On thoughts and thinking
What your heart thinks is great is great. The soul's
emphasis is always right.
If a man sits down to think he is immediately asked if has a
headache.
Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.
Some thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such a
thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
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.
The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into
freedom.
The soul of God is poured into the world through the
thoughts of men.
There is no thought in any mind but it quickly tends to
convert itself into power.
Thought makes everything fit for use.
To think is to act.
A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the
vexation of thinking.
A man's what he thinks about all day long
We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought
forth by others.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker On this
planet.
What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.
On time
One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not
the critical decisive hour. 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.
This time like all times is a very good One if we but know
what to do with it.
These times of ours are serious and full of calamity but all
times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.
The surest poison is time.
So much of our time is spent in preparation so much in
routine and so much in retrospect that the amount of each person's genius is
confined to a very few hours.
On trade
The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish huckstering
Trade.
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.
On translation
I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations.
What is really best in any book is translatable -- any real insight or broad
human sentiment.
On Travel
I am not much an advocate for traveling and I observe that
men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own and run
back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most
part Only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep
you at home?
Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover
to us the indifference of places.
Travel is a fool’s paradise.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we
must carry it with us or we find it not.
No man should travel until he has learned the language of
the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so
helpless and so ridiculous.
On trust
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly
and they will show themselves great.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Trust instinct to the end even though you can give no
reason.
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is --Let
there be truth between us two forevermore.
Self-trust is the essence of heroism.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I
have not seen.
On truth
Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure
of all men.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the applicati0n of
it to affairs.
Truth is beautiful without doubt; but so are lies.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which
you please you can never have both.
All necessary truth is its own evidence.
7
U
On ugliness
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity but in
being uninteresting.
On understanding
No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended
against it.
On uniqueness
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and
completion?
On upbringing
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or
senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to
which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves and enjoy life
in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.
V
On valor
There is always safety in valor.
Valor consists in the power of self- recovery.
On value
The value of a principle is the number of things it will
explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at Once suggest
a cure.
On victory
Wherever work is done victory is attained.
The god of victory is said to be One-handed but peace gives
victory On both sides.
No matter how often you are defeated you are born to
victory.
Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is
victory.
On villains
As there is a use in medicine for poisons so the world
cannot move without rogues.
On virtue
The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of
reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues or what we have
always esteemed such into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
On virtue
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been
discovered.
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been
discovered
The virtue in most request is conformity.
The Only reward of virtue is virtue.
The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues the better
we like him.
Hitch your wagon to a
star. Let us not lag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.
On vision
Commerce is of trivial import; love faith truth of character
the aspiration of man these are sacred.
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where
there is no path and leave a trail.
On voice
A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds wooden
voices.
W
On words
Words so vascular and alive they would bleed if you cut them
words that walked and ran.
On War
The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war.
Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt whilst the habits of the
camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman his
intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern
conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts and can rarely be
compensated in tranquil times except by some analogous vigor drawn from
occupations as hardy as war.
It is One of the most beautiful compensations in life that
no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
On want
Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never
large enough to cover.
On weakness
Our strength grows out of our weakness.
On well
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
On wealth
The first wealth is health.
Without a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar.
On wisdom
Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of
getting rich consists not in industry much less in saving but in a better order
in timeliness in being at the right spot.
Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it Phidias carves it
Shakespeare writes it Wren builds it Columbus sails it Luther preaches it
Washington arms it Watt mechanizes it.
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.
Let us be poised and wise and our own today.
Life is a festival only to the wise.
There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of
felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.
On wish and wishing
There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior
like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be
yours.
On wit
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions. No
dignity no learning no force of character can make any stand against good wit.
On wives
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
On women
Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom. The slavery of
women happened when the men were slaves of kings.
On wonder
Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
On words
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence
whether a man be behind it or no.
Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.
On work
See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the
reward.
We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his
daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that
they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?
Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be
fine or course planting corn or writing epics so Only it be honest work done to
thine own approbation it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the
thought.
On work
Work is victory.
On the world
The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension.
He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone avoids all brag is
nobody dresses plainly promises not at all performs much speaks in
monosyllables hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name and so
takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the
weather and the news yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought and the
unlocking of his learning and philosophy.
On worry
Little minds have little worries big minds have no time for
worries.
On writers and writing
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up
the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the
hour when it appears; but a court as of angels a public not to be bribed not to
be entreated and not to be overawed decides upon every man's title to fame.
