I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBe a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is what it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere are days when the great are near us, when there is no frown on their brow, no condescension even; when they take us by the hand, and we share their thought.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIt is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI have been told by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new fashion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson