The Wisdom of Emerson

"Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

"To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child."

"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before and shall never be seen again."

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide."

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.... Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what other people think."

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."

"Discontent is the want of self reliance; it is infirmity of will."

"Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, various writings