OCTOBER FIRST WE E should meet each morning, as from foreign countries, and spending the day together, should depart at night, as into foreign countries. In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. MANNERS OCTOBER SECOND The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at an end. POLITICS OCTOBER THIRD All things show near to the best. It seems not worth while to execute with too much pains some one intellectual, or æsthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dream will scatter, and we shall burst into universal power. us, that on every side we are very NOMINALIST AND REALIST When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time. GIFTS OCTOBER FIFTH Why need I volumes, if one word suffice? THE DAY'S RATION OCTOBER SIXTH My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as easily exclude myself, as him. MANNERS OCTOBER SEVENTH I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. OCTOBER EIGHTH Personal force never goes out of fashion. That is still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd of good society, the men of valor and reality are known, and rise to their natural place. OCTOBER NINTH MANNERS The union of all minds appears intimate; what gets admission to one cannot be kept out of any other; the smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the commonwealth of souls. OCTOBER TENTH USES OF GREAT MEN For he that feeds men, serveth few, OCTOBER ELEVENTH CELESTIAL LOVE He is great, whose eyes are opened to see that the reward of actions cannot be escaped, because he is transformed into his action, and taketh its nature, which bears its own fruit, like every other tree. A great man cannot be hindered of the effects of his act, because it is immediate. OCTOBER TWELFTH WORSHIP The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe;—the key to all ages is—Imbecility.... This gives force to the strong, that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action. All things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and plant, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character, Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. OCTOBER FOURTEENTH XENOPHANES A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes or compliments, or the figure you make in company, or wealth, or even the bringing things to pass, when you think how paltry are the machinery and the workers? CULTURE OCTOBER FIFTEENTH In one of those celestial days, when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we can only spend it once: we wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate its immense beauty in many ways and places. USES OF GREAT MEN OCTOBER SIXTEENTH The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member without a sympathetic injury to all the members. America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous. EMANCIPATION ADDRESS OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH The world must be just. It always leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly accept your own measure of your doing and being, whether you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you see your work produced to the concave sphere of the heavens, one with the revolution of the stars. SPIRITUAL LAWS OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,-it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the field. OCTOBER NINETEENTH For nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. DISCIPLINE WOOD NOTES |