Ralph Waldo Emerson·1841A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Seneca·65 ADYou must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.
Seneca·64 CE ADWe should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in. We too should so blend whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, that it may be all the clearer for being drawn from many sources; and then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us, we should so blend those several flavors into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from that whence it came.
