“Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.”
Ode to Beauty
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
“Talent is useful, but always keep your dagger sharp.”
Source: Quicksilver
“We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.”
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Song lyrics, Planet Waves (1974), Forever Young
Grameen Bank II: Designed to Open New Possibilities (2002)
Creation Myths (1972), Deus Faber
Context: Always at bottom there is a divine revelation, a divine act, and man has only had the bright idea of copying it. That is how the crafts all came into existence and is why they all have a mystical background. In primitive civilizations one is still aware of it, and this accounts for the fact that generally they are better craftsmen than we who have lost this awareness. If we think that every craft, whether carpenter's or smith's or weaver's, was a divine revelation, then we understand better the mystical process which certain creation myths characterize as God creating the world like a craftsman. By creating the world through such a craft he manifests a secret of his own mysterious skill.
