There is not the slightest probability that the college will foster an eminent talent in any youth. If he refuse prayers and recitations, they will torment and traduce and expel him, though he were Newton or Dante.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.
In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized – no bond, no fellow feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers and appetites walking.
A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; ‘that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.’
Jesus Christ was a minister of the pure Reason. The beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount are all utterances of the mind contemning the phenomenal world. “Blessed are the righteous poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men revile you,” etc. The Understanding can make nothing of it. ‘Tis […]
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
Children are all foreigners.
