Essayists From The United States

"The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is, that one persists; the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or "caves in.""

"Talent jogs to conclusions to which Genius takes giant leaps."

"Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment; it imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all. It is another name for the perfection of human nature, for Genius is not a fact but an ideal. It is nothing less than the possession of all the powers and impulses of humanity, in their greatest possible strength and most harmonious combination; and the genius of any particular man is great in proportion as he approaches this ideal of universal genius."

"Talent is a cistern; Genius, a fountain."

"Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence more than talents and accomplishments."

"The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no absurdities or bigotries too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions. The path of all great statesmen lies between two opposing insanities."

"In the strife of parties and principles, backbone without brains will carry it against brains without backbone. A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong."

"Nothing is rarer than the use of a word in its exact meaning."

"The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged."

"Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention'"

"A Thought embodied and embrained in fit words, walks the earth a living being."

"But man, being, as I have said, essentially an active being, he must find in activity his joy, as well as his duty and glory. And labor, like everything else that is good, is its own exceeding great reward."

"The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics."

"Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit."

"The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe. […] Books,—lighthouses erected in the great sea of time,—books, the precious depositories of the thoughts and creations of genius,—books, by whose sorcery times past become time present, and the whole pageantry of the world's history moves in solemn procession before our eyes;—these were to visit the firesides of the humble, and lavish the treasures of the intellect upon the poor. Could we have Plato, and Shakespeare, and Milton, in our dwellings, in the full vigor of their imaginations, in the full freshness of their hearts, few scholars would be affluent enough to afford them physical support; but the living images of their minds are within the eyes of all. From their pages their mighty souls look out upon us in all their grandeur and beauty, undimmed by the faults and follies of earthly existence, consecrated by time."

"The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram."

"Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, promoting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble."

"Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment."

"Everybody knows that fanaticism is religion caricatured; bears, indeed, about the same relation to it that a monkey bears to a man; yet, with many, contempt of fanaticism is received as a sure sign of hostility to religion."

"An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly."

"Throughout our whole history the United States has been facing westward."

"If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

"The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class."

"It may be that without a vision men shall die. It is no less true that, without hard practical sense, they shall also die. Without Jefferson the new nation might have lost its soul. Without Hamilton it would assuredly have been killed in body."

"There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is. For most of us it is essential that we should make a living...In the complications of modern life and with our increased accumulation of knowledge, it doubtless helps greatly to compress some years of experience into far fewer years by studying for a particular trade or profession in an institution; but that fact should not blind us to another—namely, that in so doing we are learning a trade or a profession, but are not getting a liberal education as human beings."

"As we look over the list of the early leaders of the republic, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, and others, we discern that they were all men who insisted upon being themselves and who refused to truckle to the people. With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point."

"If the American dream is to come true and to abide with us, it will, at bottom, depend on the people themselves. If we are to achieve a richer and fuller life for all, they have got to know what such an achievement implies. In a modern industrial State, an economic base is essential for all. We point with pride to our "national income," but the nation is only an aggregate of individual men and women, and when we turn from the single figure of total income to the incomes of individuals, we find there was a very marked injustice in its distribution. There is no reason why wealth, which is a social product, should not be more equitably controlled and distributed in the interests of society."

"We should recognize that schools will never solve the bedrock problems of education because the problems are problems of families, of cultural pressures that the schools reflect and thus cannot really remedy."

"The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs."

"Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart."

"Jews can't eat pork - surely anal delights are way higher up on the list of taboos."

"Maybe my desire to find meaning in all of this was just a remnant of my obsessive-compulsive behavior, and yet it felt as though a map was being drawn for me, but every landmark was a riddle that needed solving before I could unearth my own lost treasure: myself."

"The death-of-the-author thematics, as commonly adapted, are another inanity: when society does its very best to homogenize us, what is wrong with a strong, knowledgeable, and responsible ego crying in the darkening wilderness?"

"I speak from ignorance. Who once learned much, but speaks from ignorance now."

"Where there's no stop and go a thought may wet your face, a breath arrest your stare."

"Fierce for the right, he bore his part In strife with many a valiant foe; But Laughter winged his polished dart, And kindness tempered every blow."

"When will the dead world cease to dream, When will the morning break?"

"White sail upon the ocean verge, Just crimsoned by the setting sun, Thou hast thy port beyond the surge, Thy happy homeward course to run And winged hope, with heart of fire, To gain the bliss of thy desire."

"The golden time of Long Ago."

"Though all the bards of earth were dead, And all their music passed away, What Nature wishes should be said She’ll find the rightful voice to say."

"His love was like the liberal air,— Embracing all, to cheer and bless; And every grief that mortals share Found pity in his tenderness."

"Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame, A grave to rest in, and a fading name."

"And weeping fast as she had breath Janet implored us, "Wake her from her sleep!" And would not be instructed in how deep Was the forgetful kingdom of death."

"God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No belly and no bowels, Only consonants and vowels."

"And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard. You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore? May you know it yet ten more."

"Twirling your blue skirts crossing the sward Under the towers of your seminary Go listen to your teachers, old and contrary Without believing a word. Tie the white filets then about your hair And think no more of what will come to pass Than bluebirds that go flying in the air Or chattering on the grass. Practice your beauty, blue girls, ere it fail, And I with my loud lips will publish Beauty that all our powers cannot establish It is so frail. For I could tell you a story which is true; I know a lady with a terrible tongue, Blear eyes fallen from blue, All her perfections tarnished — Yet it is not long Since she was lovelier than any of you."

"Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree. Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills, The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three, And of medicos marveling sweetly on her ills."

"Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole, But was she not lucky? In flowers and lace and mourning, In love and great honour we bade God rest her soul After six little spaces of chill, and six of burning."

"Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing."

"The new "ambiguity" means, in a way adjudged favorable to literary, poetic, intellectually and psychologically well-devised and praiseworthily executed linguistic performance, uncertainty of meaning, or difficulty for the interpreter in identifying just what the meaning in question is: it means the old meanings of ambiguity with a difference. It means uncertainty of meaning (of a word or combination of words) purposefully incorporated in a literary composition for the attainment of the utmost possible variety of meaning-play compressible within the verbal limits of the composition."