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
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
Art is the path of the creator to his work.
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
Liberty is a slow fruit.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
Desire is possibility seeking expression.
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.