Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.
Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books.
A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.
Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!
All things are flowing, even those that seem immovable. The adamant is always passing into smoke. The plants imbibe the materialswhich they want from the air and the ground. They burn, that is, exhale and decompose their own bodies into the air and earth again. The animal burns, or undergoes the like perpetual consumption. The earth burns, the mountains burn and decompose, slower, but incessantly.
Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.
To the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. They alone gave reason.
I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him is to find my own, though itwere only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use.
Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. ... These road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.
The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.