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An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.

An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact.

Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1803–1882)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896) (1896 AD)

Man · anthology attribution: Emerson

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

The voice behind the words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Photographic portrait, 1857

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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