“Character is higher than intellect.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar (Primary source)
Delivered as a commencement address at Harvard, this speech was famously dubbed America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., an American polymath. Emerson urged American intellectuals to break free from European traditions and cultivate a uniquely American voice and scholarship, emphasizing the role of the scholar as Man Thinking.
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“Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
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“Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Hold your council before dinner; the full belly hates thinking as well as acting.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source