Occupation: Essayist Birth: May 25, 1803 Death: April 27, 1882
The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and ….
He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his fa….
The time is coming when all men will see that the gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, buta sweet, natural go….
And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man….
Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made--no matter how indirectly--to numbers, proclamation is then and the….
Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us..
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a n….
The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illumina….
The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of thehuman mind to new in….
A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.... We ar….
Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irres….
The walking of Man is falling forwards..
Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature..
Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sinc….
The greatest homage to truth is to use it..
Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear..
But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also the law of the hu….
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs..
All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, ….
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us..
New arts destroy the old..