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  ...words to us, the strangers of another age.
We owe to books those general benefits which come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, we often owe to them the perception of immortality. They impart sympathetic activity to the moral power. Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us who will not let us sleep. Then, they address the imagination; Only poetry inspires poetry. They become the organic culture of the time. College education is the reading of certain books which the common sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science already accumulated. If you know that,--for instance, in geometry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace,--your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is...   Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Excerpt from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 3, January, 1858 · This quote is filed under Poetry and Poets · 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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