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...Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church, Court and Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the Islands, --the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind.
We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective; in other wordsThere is properly no history; only biography.
Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,--must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. What the former age has epitomized into a formula or rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the good of verifying for itself, by means of the wall of that rule. Somewhere, sometime, it will demand and find compensation for that loss, by doing the work itself. Ferguson discovered many things in astronomy which had long been known.... Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Excerpt from Essays — First Series · This quote is filed under Biography · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation · Tell us if you know any facts or errors in this quote · Make a shirt with this quote on our USA or UK shop · Help your friends discover QB
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There is properly no history; only biography.