Water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten.
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836). copy citation

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Author Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source Nature
Topic drinking water
Date 1836
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nature,_Addresses_and_Lectures/Nature

Context

“Therefore is Space, and therefore Time, that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. A bell and a plough have each their use, and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man.” source