“A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.”
The Natural History of Intellect (1893)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
"We are Power" speech (1980)
As quoted in The World’s Great Speeches, Lewis Copeland and Lawrence Lamm, edit., Dover Publications Inc. (1958) p. 388
The Angostura Address (1819)
“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.”
“No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.”
Address to the People of Great Britain https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Address_to_the_People_of_Great_Britain, drafted by Jay and approved by the First Continental Congress on 21 October 1774 ; as contained in American Eloquence: A Collection of Speeches and Addresses by the Most Eminent Orators of America, Volume 1, ed. Frank Moore, D. Appleton (1872), p. 159
1770s
On higher education, 1960s. UDSM Alumni Newletter, volume 7. No. 2, November 2007, ISSN 0856 - 8805
VII. 216–218 (tr. P. S. Worsley).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
“A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.”
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 110
