1840

Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.4

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.... Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 5.4

It is not what a man outwardly has or wants that constitutes the happiness or misery of him. Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

On Heroes · 1840

★ 5.4

Burke said there were three estates in parliament; but, in the reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.

Chartism · 1840

★ 5.2

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic · 1840

★ 5.2

At every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty even in its errors.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 3.9

Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free.

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 3.8

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1840

★ 3.8

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Property is theft.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

1840

★ 3.7

Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!

I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke-and found that life was duty.

Chartism · 1840

★ 3.7

Ellen Sturgis Hooper

Beauty and Duty · 1840

★ 3.6

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.

Amos Bronson Alcott

1840

★ 3.5

Poem · Magazine

His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Knickerbocker · 1840

★ 2.7

Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 2.2

There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points; I allude to the Russians and the Americans... Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 2.1

Poem · Magazine

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Knickerbocker · 1840

★ 2.0

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

One life; a little gleam of time between two eternities.

On Heroes · 1840

★ 2.0

Lecture

She thoroughly understands, what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

1840

★ 2.0

Essay · Magazine

Thomas Babington Macaulay

1840

★ 1.9

O bed! O bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head.

Thomas Hood

1840

★ 1.9

Scientific literature

It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.

William Whewell

The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences · 1840

★ 1.9

Poem · Magazine

Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Knickerbocker · 1840

★ 1.1

Surely of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.