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Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Youth

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Journals (1822)

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Divinity College Address (1838)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Poems (1847)

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

The Method of Nature (1841)

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Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

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I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

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Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.

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The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.