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
The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned.
The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.
Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.
In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.
The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.
Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each of its joys ripens into a new want.
What potent blood hath modest May.
When God lets loose a great thinker on this planet, then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; nor any literary reputation or the so-called eternal names of fame that many not be refused and condemned.
Frankness invites frankness.
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.