A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe are disgusted by gossip; yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOf all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson