Sublimely stupid and beautifully dull.
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“Because I like a pinch of salt in my porridge is no reason that I want to be immersed in brine.”
I doubt the wisdom of being too wise; and I see much wisdom in some folly.
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We get anything for which we prepare.
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To win all we must give all.
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A good man in an exclusive heaven would be in hell.
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Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
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Make not your life a mere apology but a life.
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A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.
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The man who lives Truth knows no more of it than the fishes know of the sea. Such a one does not think it worthwhile to formulate it.
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The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honours, for but one thing. And that is Initiative. Doing the right thing” without being told.
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Things that chew the cud do not catch anything.
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A great success is always made up of an aggregation of little ones.
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The man who does his work so well that he needs no supervision, has already succeeded.
Too much cold burns,
Excessive sweets are sour,
Too much joy melts into tears,
Too much genius engenders madness,
And, strangest satiety of all is
Too much Love torments
We grow through Expression and the large Colleges afford a very imperfect means for Expression – all is impression, repression, and suppression.
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If you lend a willing ear to any man’s troubles, you make them your own, and you do not lessen his troubles.
It is like the catching of contagion.
Two blacks do not make one white.
Do not ‘add to the misery of the world,
Keep fear and hesitation and distrust at bay.
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Fallen fruits may be known to have belonged to the tree because they lie beneath it, though its shadow neither protects them from corruption, nor from the Elements.
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No true reform is possible which is not in its essence a development – i.e. which is not already contained in germ in, that which has to be reformed.
The revolutionary contempt of the past is fatal to all real progress, for it is only in the past that we can find such an explanation of the present as may enable us to see in it the germ of the future, – the spirit of the years to come, yearning to mix itself with life.
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People are apt to misunderstand Emerson, and perhaps he does understand himself, when in some of his earlier Essays he talks so much about the virtues of Non-conformity.
Absolute non-conformity would lead to nothing short of being chained in the lunatic asylum.
Adaptation, Concession and proper Conformity constitute Education.
The question is not between Conformity and Non-Conformity. It is between conformity to the small and seeming, and conformity to the Universal and Real. He who sacrifices the former at the altar of the latter wins. The former is the fruitful source of all sins. The latter is Virtue and it should be observed so long as the Universal and the Real has not become one with our being, a part and parcel of our life. Then and not until then there is no conformity, perfect freedom. Well, if you break the laws, you will learn this higher conformity the more quickly.
Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets.
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“Act as if by your action the maxim or rule which it involves were about to be turned into a universal law of Nature.” I. Kant.
Be like gravitation or fire respecting no personalities but the law of your Universal Nature.
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That is no secure path to a higher kind of knowledge, which begins by a quarrel with the facts of life and the ordinary consciousness of these facts.
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The words of triumph mean much or little just in proportion to the greatness of the struggle (in the eyes of others), and the thoroughness with which it has been fought out, and they will not be listened to with patience on the lips of anyone who has evaded his strongest enemies.