Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

There's always this thing of wanting to be elsewhere.

A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal.

The highly ambitious person, in spite of all his successes, always remains dissatisfied, in the same way as a greedy baby is never satisfied.

The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.' Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.

Stress is caused by being 'here' but wanting to be 'there'.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

I knew I didn't want to be stuck in Stoke Newington for the rest of my life, hanging about with idiots. That wasn't for me. I wanted to go out and have a look around.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

I was always ready to leave England for some absurd reason.

I was living in Woodstock for a long time, and I thought, I got to get out of here, man.

I've always had this deep and chronic sense of dissatisfaction.

After you get what you want you don't want it.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

I have always believed in discontent – not grumbling, which is usually selfish and individual – but a disinclination to sit down idly, knowing things are wrong.

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.

A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We're all given to fretting a lot.

So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it.

I'm fed up of doing run-of-the-mill stuff.

There are times when you wish you were somewhere else, and someone else.

It's a blessing and a curse, 'cause I'm never satisfied, so I continually want to outdo myself. But still, I'm never happy.

I have this problem where I'm never satisfied with what I do.

I tell people all the time, the status quo is so untenable to me. Like, literally, I have no patience for it.

I can't wait to get out of the house. I can't wait to get out of here. I've been telling myself this all week. The 'getting out of here' part is unspecified, though. Maybe I simply want to get away from life