For the truth is a terrible thing.
I reckon I am a smart aleck, but it is just a way to pass the time.
Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.
The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."
Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.
More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.