“The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.”
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 one thing in the world of value is the active soul—the soul, free, sovereign, active. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
— 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“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary sourceMore quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson →
“There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt Disputed“The man who is good at making an excuse, is seldom good at any thing else.”
— Benjamin Franklin Secondary source“You may be too cunning for one, but not for all.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source