Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: It was brought home to me that two men may be as sincere, as earnest, as faithful, as uncompromising, and yet hold opinions far asunder as the poles. I have before said that I think the moment of this conviction is the most perilous crisis of our lives; for myself, it threw me at once on my own responsibility, and obliged me to look for myself at what men said, instead of simply accepting all because they said it. I begin to look about me to listen to what had to be said on many sides of the question, and try, as far as I could, to give it all fair hearing.
“From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.”
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago
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James Russell Lowell 175
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat 1819–1891Related quotes
“every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer…”
Variant: He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.
Source: Night
“There is only one way to see things,
until someone shows us how to look at them
with different eyes”
Source: The Theater and Its Double
Address on The Method of Nature http://www.infomotions.com/alex2/authors/emerson-ralph/emerson-method-734/ (1841)
Aurea Dicta XX, p. 8.
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895)
“To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.”
Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2
Address on the laying of the cornerstone of the House Office Building, Washington, D.C. (14 April 1906)
1900s
Context: Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them. … If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.