Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds.

The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.

A deep man believes that the evil eye can whither, the heart's blessing can heal, and that love can overcome all odds.

If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect.

The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.

The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine.

The charm of fine manners is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to appreciation of these arts.

A man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe: that the masses of nature do undulate and flow.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.

When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic.

There are men who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race.

Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has, but he whose eyes can integrate all the parts,--that is, the poet.

All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey.

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.

The days come and go but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Society cannot do without cultivated men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become imperative.

England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children.

Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men.

There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.

Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car!

What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent; Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, Heart's love will meet thee again.

We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.

The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

All I know is reception; I am and I have: but I do not get, and when I fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage.

The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them, than any other country.

Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is. The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.

Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too.

The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.

What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?

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