Quote#World
I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction…
Quote byRalph Waldo Emerson · 1803–1882
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The American Scholar (1837), par. 15.
English (original)
I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
More from Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.
I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.
Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely.