English 11 important quotes
I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a quilty heart through life
Dimesdale to Hester
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Emerson
There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God
Emerson
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
Emerson
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.
Emerson
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing.
Emerson
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.
Emerson
And to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation ,which makes his company still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance.
Franklin
It was about this time that I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.
Franklin
My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once but to fix it on one of them at a time: ad, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on till I should have gone through the thirteen.
Franklin
Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened!... Preach! Write! Act! Do any thing, save to lie down and die!
Hester to Dimesdale
But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
Huck
Be true! Be true! Be True...
Narrator about Dimesdale
... and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.
Narrator about Pearl
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault finder will wind faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.
Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three; not a hundred or a thousands..."
Thoreau
Superfluous wealth can buy supoerfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul...
Thoreau
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
Thoreau
