To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.
Ralph Waldo EmersonEvery man's condition is a solution in hieroglyph to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBut what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson