The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.
Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.
The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt.
A seashell should be the crest of England, not only because it represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard finish ofthe men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry or a murex.
A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.
No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward!
Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt thespeaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.
We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with thespirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.
Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.
The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.
We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man’s work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.
Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.
Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.
Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness.
We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
I appeal now to the convictions of the communicants, and ask such persons whether they have not been occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of thought between the worship due to God and the commemoration due to Christ.
I am not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies; but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to oneform a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.
Labor is God’s education.