He in whom the love of truth predominates . . . submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion; but he is a candidate for truth . . . and respects the highest law of his being.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men's thinkings run laterally, never vertically.
Ralph Waldo EmersonInfancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson