We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned |
We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people. |
We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings. |
We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer. |
Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. |
What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it |
What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts? |
What I loved in the man was his health, his unity with himself; all people and all things seemed to find their quite peaceable adjustment with him. . . |
What is aristocracy? A corporation of the best, of the bravest |
What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom? |
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us |
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books. |
What we might call, by way of eminence, the Dismal Science |
What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite. |
When an oak-tree is felled the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze. |