We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIs not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof?
Ralph Waldo EmersonNatural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.
Ralph Waldo EmersonColleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson