"A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
More on Life
“Everyone desires long life, not one old age.”
“It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last.”
“His voice, even now, follows me everywhere on this longest of rides, this thing called life.”
More on Experience
“The Edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”
“And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.”
“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.”