The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBe not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMan is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHappy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPhysical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.
Ralph Waldo Emerson