“The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson

1860s, Life and Letters in New England (1867)

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 "The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives." by Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

Related quotes

Stanislaw Ulam photo

“Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain.”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 277

Edvard Munch photo

“When I write these notes, it is not to describe my own life. I am writing a study of the soul as I observe myself closely and use myself as an anatomical testing-ground. It would therefore be wrong to look on these notes as confessions. I have chosen – in accordance with Søren Kierkegaard – to split the work into two parts; the painter and his distraught friend the poet. Just as Leonarda da Vinci studied the recesses of the body and dissected human cadavers, I try from self-scrutiny to dissect what is the universal in the soul”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

written after 1908
in The Mad Poet's Diary, T 2734
1896 - 1930

“These were not religious fanatics, I saw, not mindless servants or self-punishing ascetics, but were, instead, row upon row of intelligent, questioning, alert young men and women.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 21 (p. 454)

Giovannino Guareschi photo

“But the young people of today are benighted creatures born with telephone numbers imprinted on their brains, and where passion is concerned they have about as much grace as a pig in a cornfield.”

Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist

Thunder on the Right
Don Camillo and the Prodigal Sun (1952)

Scott Westerfeld photo

“Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at leastto grow your own brain.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

John Gay photo

“Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Lucy, Act II, sc. xiii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Thomas Traherne photo

“The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

Third Century, sect. 3.
Centuries of Meditations

Ken MacLeod photo

“(on The Hamburg Cell): "It shows them as weak, alienated individuals being recruited by the classic methods of any campus cult. Young men without a strong sense of self are a Microsoft for mind viruses, and these were no exception."”

Ken MacLeod (1954) Scottish science fiction writer

weblog post http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_kenmacleod_archive.html, 3 September 2004
Other sources

“Most wise men were agreed that it were best
Not to be born, but if that may not be,
Then with the least delay to reach the goal.”

Alexis (-372–-270 BC) Athenian poet of Middle Comedy

Mandragorizomene, Fragment 1, 14.

Bruce Springsteen photo

“We gotta get out while we're young,
'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”

Bruce Springsteen book Born to Run

"Born to Run"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)
Context: In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream.
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines.
Sprung from cages on Highway 9,
Chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected
And steppin' out over the line.
Baby this town rips the bones from your back.
It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap.
We gotta get out while we're young,
'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

Related topics