It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion – it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Difference of opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive.
Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions.
You think, because you have spoken nothing when others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times… that your verdict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; it is known that you have no opinion: You are measured by your silence and found wanting. You have no oracle to utter, […]
As we grow older, we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, or quality of the man. We have another sight, and a new standard; an insight which disregards what is done for the eye, and pierces to the doer; an ear which hears not what men say, but hears what they do not […]
Old age begins in the nursery, and before the young American is put into jacket and trowsers, he says, ‘I want something which I never saw before;’ and ‘I wish I was not I.’ I have seen the same gloom on the brow even of those adventurers from the intellectual class, who had dived deepest […]
When they talk about his old age and venerableness and nearness to the grave he knows better… He is an old roue’ who cannot live on slops and must have sulphuric acid in his tea.
Obedience alone gives the right to command.
Every noble activity makes room for itself.
To what base uses we put this ineffable intellect! To reading all day murders and railroad accidents, to choosing patterns for waistcoats and scarfs.
