The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEmancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRemarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson