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 lord is the peasant that was, The peasant is the lord that shall be.
We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;--and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.
Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate.
The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.
In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.
Railroad iron is a magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.
To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another.
The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man.
A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us.
What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car!
The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.
Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates in the realm; and where fame and secular promotion are to be had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous respect of all cultivated nations.
It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.