Famous Quotes | Away profane philosopher!...

Away profane philosopher! seekest thou in nature the cause? This refers to that, and that to the next, and the next to the third, and everything refers. Thou must ask in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, ere thou canst know the law. Known it will not be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Attribution: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Speech, August 11, 1841, at Waterville College, Maine before the Society of the Adelphi. “The Method of Nature,” Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849). This passage buttresses Stanley Cavell’s belief that Emerson was a philosopher of moods seeking to go beyond the philosophical tracing of rigid lines of causality.

Categories: Essayist, Knowledge, Philosopher

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