Essays, First Series (1841)

Their wordsAll history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.

Their wordsTo believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.

Their wordsThere is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Their wordsSociety everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.

Their wordsWhoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Their wordsA foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Their wordsSpeak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

Their wordsAn institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson.

Their wordsTravelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Their wordsInsist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Their wordsSociety never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration.

Their wordsNothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Their wordsCrime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.

Their wordsEvery thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax.

Their wordsEach man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.

Their wordsBetter be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.

Their wordsSelf-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents.

Their wordsWe are wiser than we know. If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man.

Their wordsOur life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Their wordsThe one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Their wordsGod offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please,—you can never have both.

Their wordsThough we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.