Quote collection
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"We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt."
"Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare."
"It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way."
"The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal."
"Men of extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, "Not unto us, not unto us." According to the faith of their times, they have built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible conductors seemed to their eye their deed."
"We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."
"I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."
"Up and away for life! be fleet!- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,- The punctual stars will vigil keep,- Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud."
"Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson"
"Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts."
"In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character."
"I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions."
"For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were."
"The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number."
"The Artist always has the masters in his eyes."
"All great men come out of the middle classes."
"Our expenses are all for conformity."
"Common sense is as rare as genius."
"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."
"If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner."