Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Put any company of people together with freedom for conversation, and a rapid self-distribution takes place into sets and pairs. The best are accused of exclusiveness. It would be more true to say they separate as oil from water, as children from old people, without love or hatred in the matter, each seeking his like; and any interference with the affinities would produce constraint and suffocation. All conversation is a magnetic experiment, I know that my friend can talk eloquently; you know that he cannot articulate a sentence: we have seen him in different company.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We do not believe our own thought; we must serve somebody; we must quote somebody; we dote on the old and the distant; we are tickled by great names; we import the religion of other nations; we quote their opinions; we cite their laws.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“But the best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you would lift me you must be on higher ground. If you would liberate me you must be free. If you would correct my false view of facts,”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Each is liable to panic, which is, exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If the singer sings from a sense of duty or from seeing no way of escape, I had rather have none.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.””

— Ralph Waldo Emerson