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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I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Old Age," Society and Solitude (1870).

In a footnote, Edward Emerson notes that this sentence was included in an earlier edition of the essay.

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