“The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
Source: Self-Reliance
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
“No one knows what he can do till he tries.”
Maxim 786
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.”
X magazine (1959-62)
Context: The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity. It may be labouring the obvious to say so but it is too little recognised in art journalism now that a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting is something which happens to the painter once in a given minute; it is unique in that it will never happen again and in this sense is an impossible object. It is judged by the painter simply as a success or failure without qualification. And it is something which happens in life not in art: a picture which was merely the product of art would not be very interesting and could tell us nothing we were not already aware of. The old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”, expresses the opposite idea to that which animates the painter before his canvas. It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Now this is very different in the case of men, for theirs is a double nature mixed up in one, that of soul and body; the former divine, the latter full of darkness and obscurity: hence naturally arise warfare and discord between the two.
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

Quote from 'Max Ernst', exhibition catalogue, Galerie Stangl, Munich, 1967, U.S., pp.6-7, as cited in Edward Quinn, Max Ernst. 1984, Poligrafa, Barcelona. p. 12
1951 - 1976