The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.
Ralph Waldo EmersonStrong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.
Ralph Waldo EmersonChildren and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson