Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThen climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson