We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of … - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny. The world globes itself in a drop of dew.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.