The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSociety is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIntellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.
Ralph Waldo Emerson