To believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.
Ralph Waldo Emerson'Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.
Ralph Waldo EmersonGreat is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its unmaskers.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAt times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson