Great Throughts Treasury

"The great poems, Shakespeare's included, are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common man, the life-blood of democracy"

"The greatest city is that which has the greatest men and women."

"The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds — where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough — a modest living— and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities."

"The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give."

"The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, he turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript."

"The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to your nevertheless, and filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place, search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."

"The last sunbeam lightly falls from the finished Sabbath, on the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking, down a new-made double grave."

"The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment, and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years."

"The moon gives you light, and the bugles and the drums give you music, and my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love."

"The morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."

"The new recruits, even boys—the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements—they buckle the straps carefully; outdoors arming—indoors arming—the flash of the musket-barrels; the white tents cluster in camps—the arm'd sentries around—the sunrise cannon, and again at sunset; arm'd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves; (How good they look, as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders! How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces, and their clothes and knapsacks cover'd with dust!) The blood of the city up—arm'd! arm'd! the cry everywhere; the flags flung out from the steeples of churches, and from all the public buildings and stores; the tearful parting—the mother kisses her son—the son kisses his mother; (Loth is the mother to part—yet not a word does she speak to detain him.)"

"The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and justice and equality that are in the soul rule."

"The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?"

"The past and the present wilt. I have fill’d them, emptied them, and proceed to fill my next fold of the future."

"The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing."

"The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead."

"The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

"The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, they scorn the best I can do to relate to them."

"The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."

"The purpose of democracy… is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments and ostensible failure, to illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly train’d in sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and series of laws, unto himself."

"The real artist is in humanity. What are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of them all."

"The real war will never get in the books."

"The revolver rules, the revolver is triumphant."

"The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange."

"The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer."

"The secret of it all is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught."

"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or partial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious ones which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignity to human life."

"The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage is closed and done. From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells; but I with mournful tread walk the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead."

"The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me.) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away."

"The smallest sprout shows there is really no death; and if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, and ceas’d the moment life appear’d. All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses; and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

"The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung."

"The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are."

"The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem."

"The universe is duly in order, everything in its place."

"The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted, now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find."

"The words of my book are nothing, the drift of it everything."

"The world below the brine, forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,"

"The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, they do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, they do not think whom they souse with spray."

"Thee for my recitative, thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel."

"Their manners, speech, dress, friendships, -- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy -- the picturesque looseness of their carriage -- their deathless attachment to freedom -- their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean -- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states -- the fierceness of their roused resentment -- their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- their susceptibility to a slight -- the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of their speech -- their delight in music, a sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul -- their good temper and open-handedness -- the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it."

"Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?"

"Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory, young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies."

"There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth."

"There is an indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius."

"There is no God any more divine than Yourself."

"There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe."

"There is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero."

"There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves - and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance."

"There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me... I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, it is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol... Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness."

"There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius."