For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue, – he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.
Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection.
Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men’s experience, only a ballroom-code.
The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. “Blessed be nothing,” and “The worse things are, the better they are,” are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.
A philosopher must be more than a philosopher.
A man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him.
A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation.
The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.
It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.
The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.
To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply that the majority are unripe, andhave not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion.
The mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee.
In the actual world – the painful kingdom of time and place – dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.
Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.
A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.
When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlars.
Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student’s behoof?
But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.