A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke: men of genius, but not yetaccredited: one gets the cheer of their light, without paying too great a tax.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love of what is simple and beautiful; independence, and cheerful relation, these are the essentials.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.
Ralph Waldo Emerson