1817 – 1862. American naturalist, philosopher, poet. A Transcendentalist.
Quotes:
1. There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
2. It is not worth to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
3. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
4. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
5. Things do not change; we change.
6. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned the cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade. But of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing.
7. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.
8. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
9. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its own weight.
10. We are often more lonely among people than in the silence of our rooms.
