The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorageis quicksand.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNo reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All.
Ralph Waldo Emerson