“Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life?”
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
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Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary
Who Put Jesus on the Cross, p. 170
“I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.”
Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer
Apocalypse Descending (2002)
Context: I was about ten when I first read 1984 and Lord of the Flies, both of which absolutely terrified me — especially 1984, because I figured out that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, would have been born the same year I was. I knew these books were fiction, but I was far too young to have a grasp on the political or cultural realities behind them — I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.
Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist
Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau
“The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us — invisibly.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author
As quoted in No More Words : A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001) by Reeve Lindbergh, p. 41
Context: So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us — invisibly.
Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer
As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011)
Robert Rubin book In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington
"In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington" https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_an_Uncertain_World/oUz_orYBwPcC?hl=en&gbpv=0, p. 64
“If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
“Despair and Genius are too oft connected”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
Source: Byron Poems
