Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhen we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSolitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, and October woods!
Ralph Waldo Emerson