“A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

History
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727

American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

This seems to have been first attributed to Franklin in The New Age Magazine Vol. 66 (1958), and the earliest appearance of it yet located is in Coronet magazine, Vol. 34 (1953), p. 27, where it was attributed to a Louise Stein; it thus seems likely to have been derived from an earlier statement of Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person (1943) : "At very best, a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package".
Misattributed