The Complete Harvard Classics

by Charles William Eliot

within twenty years after Woolman’s death the practise of slavery had ceased in the Society of Friends. But his influence did not stop there, for no small part of the enthusiasm of the general emancipation movement is traceable to his labors.

And till we are perswaded to stop, and step a little aside, out of the noisy Crowd and Incumbering Hurry of the World, and Calmly take a Prospect of Things, it will be impossible we should be able to make a right Judgment of our Selves or know our own Misery. But after we have made the just Reckonings which Retirement will help us to, we shall begin to think the World in great measure Mad, and that we have been in a sort of Bedlam all this while.

If the worth of a Gift sets the Obligation, and directs the return of the Party that receives it; he that is ignorant of it, will be at a loss to value it and the Giver, for it.

Frugality is good if Liberality be join’d with it. The first is leaving off superfluous Expences; the last bestowing them to the Benefit of others that need. The first without the last begins Covetousness; the last without the first begins Prodigality: Both together make an excellent Temper. Happy the Place where ever that is found.

To this a spare Diet contributes much. Eat therefore to live, and do not live to eat.

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

But in Marriage do thou be wise; prefer the Person before Money; Vertue before Beauty, the Mind before the Body: Then thou hast a Wife, a Friend, a Companion, a Second Self; one that bears an equal Share with thee in all thy Toyls and Troubles.

Fear and Gain are great Perverters of Mankind, and where either prevail, the Judgment is violated.

In all Debates, let Truth be thy Aim, not Victory, or an unjust Interest: And endeavor to gain, rather than to expose thy Antagonist.

Knowledge is the Treasure, but Judgment the Treasurer of a Wise Man.

If we would amend the World, we should mend Our selves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.

Never give out while there is Hope; but hope not beyond Reason, for that shews more Desire than Judgment.

The generality are the worse for their Plenty: The Voluptuous consumes it, the Miser hides it: ‘T is the good Man that uses it, and to good Purposes. But such are hardly found among the Prosperous.

Refuse not to be informed: For that shews Pride or Stupidity.

Remember the Proverb, Bene qui latuit, bene vixit. They are happy that live Retiredly.

It is the Advantage little Men have upon them; they can be Private, and have leisure for Family Comforts, which are the greatest worldly Contents Men can enjoy.

Government has many Shapes: But ‘t is Sovereignty, tho’ not Freedom, in all of them.

Men must have publick Minds, as well as Salaries; or they will serve private Ends at the Publick Cost.

Impartiality, though it be the last, is not the least Part of the Character of a good Magistrate.

To do Evil, that Good may come of it, is for Bunglers in Politicks, as well as Morals.

He that Judges not well of the Importance of his Affairs, though he may be always Busy, he must make but a small Progress.

Speak properly, and in as few Words as you can, but always plainly; for the End of Speech is not Ostentation, but to be understood.

Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still.

The Jealous are Troublesome to others, but a Torment to themselves.

And truly then it is, that Sense shines with the greatest Beauty when it is set in Humility.

Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts. But nevertheless it doth fascinate and bind hand and foot those that are either shallow in judgment or weak in courage, which are the greatest part; yea and prevaileth with wise men at weak times. Therefore we see it hath done wonders in popular states; but with senates and princes less; and more ever upon the first entrance of bold persons into action than soon after; for boldness is an ill keeper of promise.

Therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so that the right use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds, and under the direction of others. For in counsel it is good to see dangers; and in execution not to see them, except they be very great.

Therefore the multiplying of nobility and other degrees of quality in an over proportion to the common people doth speedily bring a state to necessity; and so doth likewise an overgrown clergy; for they bring nothing to the stock; and in like manner, when more are bred scholars than preferments can take off.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

Neither is the opinion of some of the Schoolmen to be received, that a war cannot justly be made but upon a precedent injury or provocation. For there is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of a war.

he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives you the best covenant of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on your proceedings.

a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil?

When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason, and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that wrote before him; if in this the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian [74] oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labor of book-writing, and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny [75] with his guardian, and his censor’s hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot, or seducer, it can not be but a dishonor and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.

To startle thus betimes at a mere unlicensed pamphlet will after a while be afraid of every conventicle, [90] and a while after will make a conventicle of every Christian meeting.

Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.

there being so many whose business and profession merely it is, to be the champions of truth; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth, or inability?

who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.

When a man hath been laboring the hardest labor in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please; only that he may try the matter by dint of argument, for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valor enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth.

How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief stronghold of our hyprocrisy to be ever judging one another.

Yet if all can not be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled.

though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yoeman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only.

instead of beginning with arts most easy, and those be such as are most obvious to the sense, they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective [13] abstractions of logic and metaphysics; so that they having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge, till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them with the sway [14] of friends either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity;

these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at the schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words or such things chiefly, as were better unlearned.