M AKE yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope. LITERARY ETHICS SEPTEMBER SECOND I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed, that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. EXPERIENCE SEPTEMBER THIRD Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are. What I am, and what I think, is conveyed to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. WORSHIP Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well. THE TRANSCENDENTALIST SEPTEMBER FIFTH Think me not unkind and rude, I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men. THE APOLOGY SEPTEMBER SIXTH Very idle is all curiosity concerning other peoples' estimate of us, and idle is all fear of remaining unknown. If a man know that he can do anything, that he can do it better than any one else, he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is guaged and stamped. SPIRITUAL LAWS SEPTEMBER SEVENTH Honor him whose life is perpetual victory; him, who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds support in labor, instead of praise; who does not shine, and would rather not. WORSHIP SEPTEMBER EIGHTH You shall get your lesson out of the hour, and the object, whether it be a concentrated or a wasteful employment, even in reading a dull book, or working off a stint of mechanical day labor, which your necessities or the necessities of others impose. LITERARY ETHICS SEPTEMBER NINTH To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense. SELF-RELIANCE SEPTEMBER TENTH The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends, and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. POWER SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH Yet shine forever virgin minds, Disconcert the searching spy, The durance of a granite ledge To those who gaze from the sea's edge. ASTREA SEPTEMBER TWELFTH Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character. Ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, ... clerks to counting rooms, soldiers to the frontier. FATE SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which Nature never pardons. The happy conditions of life may be had on the same terms. Their attraction for you is the pledge that they are within your reach. Our prayers are prophets. CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be bought,—neither by comfort, neither by pride, and though I be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me. MAN THE REFORMER SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba. SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH There need no vows to bind Whom not each other seek but find. NATURE CELESTIAL LOVE SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common men are apologies for men; they bow the head, they excuse themselves with prolix reasons, they accumulate appearances because the substance is not. SPIRITUAL LAWS SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some |