The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritualcreation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.
Ralph Waldo Emerson