"Our age is very cheap and intelligible...." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our age is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles, mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few rides in a year.
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.”
“Echo waits with art and care And will the faults of song repair.”
“Life is a series of surprises.”
More on Society
“Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.”
“Château and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well-thousands of acres of land-a whole province of France-all France itself-lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star.”
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
More on Materialism
“If the ingredients for happiness are not within a person, no material success or entertainment or platinum credit cards can make that person smile.”
“Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.”
“I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.”