It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe laws of light and of heat translate each other;-so do the laws of sound and colour; and so galvanism, electricity and magnetism are varied forms of this selfsame energy.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThere is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work-declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life, nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line and say that society can never prosper but must always be bankrupts, until every man does that which he was created to do.
Ralph Waldo EmersonBut a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.
Ralph Waldo EmersonLife is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. ... These road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson