The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.
Know that emanations flow from all things that have come into being.
Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays.
The impression which those sublime sentences made on me last night has
awakened me before any cockcrowing. Their influence lingers around me like
a fragrance, or as the fog hangs over the earth late into the day.
I expand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression goes, but here
outdoors, is the place to store up influences. I get my new experiences
still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck
Stow's swamp listening to the native wood thrush.
A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends
are his magnetism's.
Honor and fortune exist to him who always recognizes the neighborhood
of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
You need not speak to me, I need not go where you are, that you should
exert magnetism on me. Be you only whole and sufficient, and I shall
feel you in every part of my life and fortune, and I can as easily dodge
the gravitation of the globe as escape your influence.
This is that in which the individual is no longer his own foolish master, but inhales an odorous and celestial air, is wrapped round with awe of the object.
Every earnest glance we give to the realities around us, with intent to learn, proceeds from a holy impulse,
Too feeble fall the impressions of nature upon us, every touch should thrill.
We are escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects. Let Nature be your teacher.
Whilst a necessity so great caused the man to exist, his health and
erectness consist in the fidelity with which he transmits influences from
the vast and universal to the point on which his genius can act.
Men may tire themselves in a labyrinth of search, and talk of God:
But if we would know him indeed, it must be from the impressions we receive
of him; and the softer our hearts are, the deeper and livelier those will
be upon us.
The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some old prediction to us, and converting into things the words and and signs which we had heard and seen without heed.
Every thing the individual sees without him corresponds to his states of mind, and every thing is in turn intelligible to him, as his onward thinking leads him into the truth to which the fact or series belongs.
The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing
thought. Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night,
house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would
all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the
significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet
with a terrible simplicity.
Let ours be like the meeting of two planets, not hastening to confound
their jarring spheres, but drawn together by the influence of a subtle
attraction, soon to roll diverse in their respective orbits, from this
their perigee, or point of nearest approach.
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even
touched. They must be felt."
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