man should let
out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and
hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him. The common
experience is that the man fits himself as well as he can to the
customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a
dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is
lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full
stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find
in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to
their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character
make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his
apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never
know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the meanness
and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the
obedient spiracle of your character and aims.

We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men,
and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done.
We think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in
certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can
extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and
a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and
Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and
company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or vulgar
society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet written,
but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In
our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality,
the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand
other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will.
To make habitually a new estimate,--that is elevation.

What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In
himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is
in his nature and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The
goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him
scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite
productiveness.

He may have his own. A man's genius, the quality that differences him
from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the
selection of what is fit for hi