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
A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong . . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.
For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.
Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.
I am become a transparent eyeball...
Why should we not have a first-hand and immediate experience of God?
The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.
Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.
The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.
We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.
If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.
Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.
Life is not measured by its length, but by its depth.