The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAll sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson