We are so much the victims of custom and usage, of habit and convention, that even where we at once perceive this weakness in other persons, we fail entirely to perceive it in ourselves. Emerson, the man who wrote the finest essay on the virtue of nonconformity, who proclaimed, "thus ossification is the fall of man," who became the outstanding American prophet of novel views in religion, was completely conformist and habitarian at home, was still the follower of old views in diet. Whenever he encountered dietetic reform visibly in practice before his eyes, he almost lost his serenity in the vehemence of the scorn which it provoked in him. His was still the compartmentally divided mind; he sought truth in the study room but not in the dining room! He admired reform in one field but despised it in another.
-- Notebooks Category 5: The Body > Chapter 3 : Diet > # 4
