“When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson, book Essays: First Series

Source: Essays: First Series

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.”

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“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
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The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
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Context: It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry photo

“It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

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Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)

“I wonder if anyone always knows-you, me, Jackie Robinson, even Robert Frost-that we will cross to Safety. Or is it rather that when we are There, we think we always knew?”

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