Essays, Second Series (1844)

Their wordsFor it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.

Their wordsThe etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.

Their wordsThe only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Their wordsDream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.

Their wordsTo fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.

Their wordsLife is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

Their wordsCharacter is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. A man should give us a sense of mass.

Their wordsManners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space.

Their wordsNo rentroll nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimulation; and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as really all the forms of good-breeding point that way.

Their wordsRings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself.

Their wordsFor the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person.

Their wordsCities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath.

Their wordsIn dealing with the State we ought to remember that its institution are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good, we may make better.

Their wordsEvery actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Their wordsHence the less government we have the better,—the fewer laws, and the less confided power.

Their wordsTo educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary.

Their wordsGreat men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Their wordsDemocracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the State and in the schools it is indispensable to resist the consolidation of all men into a few men.

Their wordsThe criticism and attack on institutions, which we have witnessed, has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: he has become tediously good in some particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.

Their wordsEach man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union the smaller and the more pitiful he is.