Out Quotes (2 quotes)
Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.
Emerson's translation of a much earlier saying, as given in 'Compensation', collected in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1903), 105. A note on p.399 shows the same sentiment in the original Latin by Horace in his Epistles, i, x, 24: “Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret,/Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.” The first part of the couplet translates as above; the second part adds “And will burst through your foolish contempt, triumphant.” More examples, predating Emerson, are given in George Latimer Apperson and Martin H. Manser, The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (1993, 2006), 158.
Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret,
Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
[Drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she hurries back,
And will burst through your foolish contempt, triumphant.]
Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
[Drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she hurries back,
And will burst through your foolish contempt, triumphant.]
— Horace
From Epistles, i, x, 24. First line as translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Second line Google translation by Webmaster. English variants, from 1539 and later, are given in George Latimer Apperson and Martin H. Manser, The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (1993, 2006), 158.