Quote collection
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"To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State."
"The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child."
"The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically."
"All natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence."
"Beware of jokes from which we go away hollow and ashamed."
"In excited conversation we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours."
"Literature is eavesdropping."
"Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think."
"Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him?"
"If I am the devil's child, I will live then, by the devil."
"How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone is."
"No facts to me are sacred; none are profane."
"Where the banana grows man is sensual and cruel."
"Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself."
"The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do."
"Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history isto be read and written."
"The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature."
"For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture."
"Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word."
"For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead."