Ralph Waldo Emerson’s diary, 1824

Profound knowledge is good, but profound genius is better, because, though one obtains with greater ease all the thoughts of all wise men, which the other obtains…

Material beauty perishes or palls. Intellectual ^ beauty limits admiration to seasons and ages ; v hath its ebbs and flows of delight. . . . But moral beauty is…

" By books," says the gentle Shepherd, " I crack with kings." 'Tis a godlike invention which thus annihilates to all purposes of mental improvement both space and…

It is a striking feature in our condition that we so hardly arrive at truth. . . . The final cause of this is, no doubt, found in the doctrine that we were not sent…