Robert D. Richardson quotes:

[Emerson] was interested not in the bookworm, not even in the thinker, only in Man Thinking.

Just as science is more immediate and exciting than the history of science, so is insight more compelling than a history of insight.

Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.

If death is the end of everything, then living is everything.