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
All life is a nap. The more naps you take the better.
By God, I will not obey this filthy enactment!
The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.
Sitting back in the evening, stargazing and stroking your dog, is an infallible remedy.
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.
The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going
Our best thoughts come from others.
Harder still it has proved to rule the dragon Money... A whole generation adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief they were enriching the country they were impoverishing.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Be brave enough to do the loving thing.
The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.