I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.
Ralph Waldo Emerson