Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 May 1803
CountryUnited States of America
Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.
We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.
Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.
Homeopathy is insignificant as an act of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
The multitude of the sick shall not make us deny the existence of health.
The poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease and save the life.
Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.
Valor consists in the power of self recovery.
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.
The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.
More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.