But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFrom within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMen imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMen have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson