Written Advice

     Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were the first form of the work of a Hero: Books, written words, are still miraculous Runes, the latest form! In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined, — they are precious, great; but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives; can be called up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.
— Thomas Carlyle, from On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.

     I stopped my horse lately, where a great number of people were collected at a Vendue of Merchant's goods. The hour of sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the Times: and one of the company called to a clean old man, with white locks, 'Pray, Father ABRAHAM! what do you think of the Times? Won't these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to.'
     Father ABRAHAM stood up, and replied, 'If you would have my advice; I will give it you, in short; for a word to the wise is enough, and many words won't fill a bushel, as Poor RICHARD says.'
     They all joined, desiring him to speak his mind; and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows:
     'Friends' says he, 'and neighbours! The taxes are indeed heavy; and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might the more easily discharge them: but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our IDLENESS, three times as much by our PRIDE, and four times as much as much by our FOLLY: and from these taxes, the Commissioners cannot ease, or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us. GOD helps them that help themselves, as Poor RICHARD says in his Almanac of 1733.
     It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its people One-tenth part of their TIME, to be employed in its service. But Idleness taxes many of us much more; if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing; with that which is spent in idle employments or amusements that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labour wears; while the used key is always bright, as Poor RICHARD says. But dost thou love Life? Then do not squander time! for that's the stuff Life is made of, as Poor RICHARD says....
     If Time be of all things the most precious, Wasting of Time must be (as Poor RICHARD says) the greatest prodigality; since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost time is never found again ... and He that riseth late, must trot all day; and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in Poor RICHARD; who adds, Drive thy business! Let not that drive thee! and
                          Early to bed, and early to rise,
                         Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
— From Poor Richard Improved, Richard Saunders.


     Dear Sir: — I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of 'Leaves of Grass'. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

     I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty.

     It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

     I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord, Massachusettes, 1855, letter to Walt Whitman "greeting" him.