Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.
We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.
Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.
When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.
Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.
He that can work is born to be king of something.
The press is the fourth estate of the realm.
True friends, like ivy and the wall Both stand together, and together fall.
The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.
Love is ever the beginning of knowledge as fire is of light.
Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our Me; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh.
The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.
What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words.... Be not the slave of Words.
Painful for a person is rebellious independence, only in loving companionship with his associates does a person feel safe: Only in reverently bowing down before the higher does a person feel exalted.
Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers.
Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.
No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.
Wonder is the basis of worship.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.
To know, to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic art, of which the best logic's can but babble on the surface.
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
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