Family Tree USA – September 2019

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everything’srelative

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“EVERY BOOK IS A QUOTATION; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-

quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”

Writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson speculated whether anything could truly be original during an 1859

lecture in Boston. The lecture became an essay titled “Quotation and Originality,” and Emerson included it in collections

of his work.