“But genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead. Man hopes. Genius creates. To create—to create—is the proof of a divine presence.”
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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“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“The law of nature is, do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
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“If a man owns land, the land owns him.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Fear always springs from ignorance.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source