shahab on Nostr: "All through his [Ralph Waldo Emerson's] life he kept a journal. This book, he said, ...

"All through his [Ralph Waldo Emerson's] life he kept a journal. This book, he said, was his 'Savings Bank.' The thoughts thus received and garnered in his journals were indexed, and a great many of them appeared in his published works. They were religiously set down just as they came, in no order except chronological, but later they were grouped, enlarged or pruned, illustrated, worked into a lecture or discourse, and, after having in this capacity undergone repeated testing and rearranging, were finally carefully sifted and more rigidly pruned, and were printed as essays."

Dr. Edward Emerson