Quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Emerson in His Journals , ed. by Joel Porte (1982).:"Nominalist and Realist" Essays, Second Series (1844)"Ability" English Traits (1856)"Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1844" Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903)"Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1884" Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903)

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Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Nature," Essays, Second Series (1844).

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