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"Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at whatis inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come."
"Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients."
"Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, culture corrects the theory of success."
"Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart."
"My hours are peaceful centuries."
"If, at any time, it comes into my head, that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone."
"We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, forthat is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living it."
"I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax."
"Whoever has had the experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse from that heart isan oath from the Most High. I know not what the word sublime means, if it be not the intimations, in this infant, of a terrific force."
"It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears."
"If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it."
"Silent rushes the swift Lord Through ruined systems still restored, Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, Plants with worlds the wilderness; Waters with tears of ancient sorrow Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. House and tenant go to ground, Lost in God, in Godhead found."
"Sole and self-commanded works, Fears not undermining days, Grows by decays, And, by the famous might that lurks In reaction and recoil, Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil."
"I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy."
"A man in a cave or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves."
"Housekeeping is not beautiful; it cheers and raises neither the husband, the wife, nor the child; neither the host nor the guest;it oppresses women. A house kept to the end of prudence is laborious without joy; a house kept to the end of display is impossible to all but a few women, and their success is dearly bought."
"All forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man."
"The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth: they had as lief hear that their friend is dead, as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can never do anything for humanity."
"Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof?"
"When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen."