“Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life?”

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual hor…" by Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

Related quotes

Ernest Dimnet photo
Elizabeth Hand photo

“I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.”

Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer

Apocalypse Descending (2002)
Context: I was about ten when I first read 1984 and Lord of the Flies, both of which absolutely terrified me — especially 1984, because I figured out that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, would have been born the same year I was. I knew these books were fiction, but I was far too young to have a grasp on the political or cultural realities behind them — I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.

Hanif Kureishi photo

“At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo

“The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us — invisibly.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

As quoted in No More Words : A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001) by Reeve Lindbergh, p. 41
Context: So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us — invisibly.

Miranda July photo

“I’m totally not kidding. … Life is too short. This is all too hard to do to actually be kidding about the whole thing.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011)

Robert Rubin photo

“The only place people find fulfillment is within themselves. And too often, that's the last place they look.”

"In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington" https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_an_Uncertain_World/oUz_orYBwPcC?hl=en&gbpv=0, p. 64

George Gordon Byron photo

“Despair and Genius are too oft connected”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Source: Byron Poems

Vladimir Nabokov photo

Related topics