Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAs the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds.
Ralph Waldo EmersonProverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe ancestor of every action is thought; when we understand that we begin to comprehend that our world is governed by thought and that everything without had its counterpart originally within the mind.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThose who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, andhave an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson