You've got to be taught, to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught, from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear,
You've got to be carefully taught.
People are timid and apologetic; they are no longer upright; they dare not say "I think," "I am," but quote some saint or sage. They are ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.
In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.
We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.
Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household life, we must adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower
For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring orrather terminating my own soul.
Let the amelioration in our laws of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich.