Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord? HAMLET: Words, words, words.

Empty words almost echo within themselves

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

If somebody ever says something is a mature theme, it's bound to not be. I mean, you shouldn't fall for that. You can make it sound mature, but anything that's about being mature is pretty immature.

A creep is someone who claims he's one thing but he's actually another.

It seems, by today's standards, that it's better to seek approval than to tell the truth. It's better to utter sweet nothings than to boldly say something of substance.

Be fond of the man who jests at his scars, if you like; but never believe he is being on the level with you.

It’s better to be quotable than to be honest.

I saw him turn his charm on and off, like water from the tap at the kitchen sink. He said nothing of substance. He seemed to me essentially an actor.

The man [President Woodrow Wilson] has no sense of things that penetrates below the surface. With him the rhetoric of a thing is the thing itself.

All tongue, without either head or heart.’

I do this work, but I am uncomfortable in situations where you're hyped into something you're not. Just because you're in a long limo doesn't mean anything.

It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count.

Instead of sounding pretentious, phony, or repetitive, I'd rather not speak.

If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because it has been said in Latin.

You can't just sing the song and live another life, you know. It's really difficult now because that's not what it's about. It's pop and pop just says that we could be actors. We could sing about stuff and not believe in it. It could be absolutely fraudulent and it doesn't really matter.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

If you hate something, you hate it, and if you like something or somebody, you like it, but tell the truth. And most celebrities have that thin veneer that they will not break for you.

I'm reminded of an interview Larry King had on his talk show with one of Michael Jackson's sisters. He's talking about how many millions she made on her latest record, and all of a sudden, she looks at him tearfully and says, "Larry, you know, I'm not interested in money or sales or songs. I'm a spiritual person." And I thought, "Oh my god..."

Truth is not so threadbare as speech, because fewer people can make use of it.

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

The more articulate somebody is, the more suspicious I am of them. I like to feel that the important things remain unsaid.