"The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight." -Ralph Emerson
From my understanding in the essay, "The American Scholar," Emerson discusses how true scholars must determine the value of different experiences and observations. For example, one person may observe that a tree has sprouted and another person might observe that there are leaves that grow. And those people may find it facinating when they see it for the first time. But scholars take in what they see and relate their observations to something that can be useful. Of the observations found the American scholar would realize that trees are in nature to produce oxygen which inevitably helps us a species survive. I think that, with the quote above, Emerson, is trying to say that scholars are most ambitious of people. And they are this way because they take things that were once mysterious and classify them into things that the modern person can understand. Another big thing that Emerson highlights is that scholars think for themselves. They take their own notes and simplify them instead of following someone else's.
If I could take the above quote and make it my own i would say: "Persons with higher aspirations take note of even the smallest most complex detail, and turn it into an image that everyone else can conceptualize."
I feel that my quote would be parallel to what Emerson was saying because reflects the fact that scholars or ambitious people use their own knowledge to allow others to understand complex objects or behaviors.
