Quote added by staff

Why not add this to your bookmarks?

  ...bough to bough, is the Power which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another moment from that one.
But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.   If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or pitch a ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry. A political orator wittily compared our party promises to western roads, which opened stately enough, with planted trees on either...   Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Excerpt from Essays — Second Series · This quote is tagged Exercise · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

  Chat about this quote in the Village Inn

  Share corrections or notes in the village Library

• Biography
• 3 Fans
• This quote in blogs