To Be Is To Live

The Objection To Conforming To Usages That Have Become Dead To You Is, That It Scatters Your Force.

Among The Multitude Of Scholars And Authors, We Feel No Hallowing Presence; We Are Sensible Of A Knack And Skill Rather Than Of Inspiration; They Have A Light, And Know Not Whence It Comes, And Call It Their Own; Their Talent Is Some Exaggerated Faculty, Some Overgrown Member, So That Their Strength Is A Disease.

The Student Is To Read History Actively And Not Passively; To Esteem His Own Life The Text, And Books The Commentary. Thus Compelled, The Muse Of History Will Utter Oracles As Never To Those Who Do Not Respect Themselves.

The Kitchen Clock Is More Convenient Than Sidereal Time. We Must Use The Popular Category, As We Do By The Linnæan Classification, For Convenience, And Not As Exact And Final. Otherwise, We Are Presently Confounded, When The Best-settled Traits Of One Race Are Claimed By Some New Ethnologist As Precisely Characteristic Of The Rival Tribe.

I Wish To Speak With All Respect Of Persons, But Sometimes I Must Pinch Myself To Keep Awake, And Preserve The Due Decorum. They Melt So Fast Into Each Other, That They Are Like Grass And Trees, And It Needs An Effort To Treat Them As Individuals.