Ralph Waldo Emerson

The faith that stand on authority is not faith.

The faith that stand on authority is not faith.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech,
the sea which receives tributaries from every region read more

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech,
the sea which receives tributaries from every region under
heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles
river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in
originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or
can make better chairs read more

If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or
can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs,
than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his
house, tho it be in the woods. And if a man knows the law,
people will find it out, tho he live in a pine shanty, and resort
to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the
prisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint landscape, and convey
into oils and ochers all the enchantments of spring or autumn; or
can liberate or intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious
songs and verses, 'tis certain that the secret can not be kept:
the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and
tens and fifties to his door.