Friday, September 10, 2010

Quotations on creativity—Ralph Waldo Emerson


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Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Authors, Famous Americans Issue, 1940
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“This power of imagination, the making of some familiar object, as fire or rain or a bucket or a shovel, do a new duty as an exponent of some truth or general law, bewitches and delights men. It is a taking of dead sticks and clothing them about with immortality; it is music out of creaking and groaning. All opaque things are transparent and the light of heaven struggles through.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson, Edward Waldo, and Waldo Emerson Forbes, eds. Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vol. 9. Journal 51, 1860. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company and The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1913. 277-78. Google Books. Web. 10 Sept. 2010. (From journal entry titled “Imagination.”) [development of the “individual”]

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