"The mark of a man of the..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.”

“The life of labor does not make men, but drudges.”

“The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.”

“Character isn't developed when we get what we want. Character is developed when we don't get what we want.”

“A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean.”

“Our actions determine our dispositions.”

“How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!”

“Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.”

“Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art.”