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 Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add.
O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I mock at the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretch'd beneath the pines When the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and pride of man, At the Sophist's schools, and the learned clan; For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?
Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings.
The best of life is conversation.
Consistency is the bugbear that frightens little minds.
Universally, the better gold the worse man. The political economist defies us to show any gold mine country that is traversed by good roads, or a shore where pearls are found on which good schools are erected.
If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.
Chiefly the sea-shore has been the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.
I always seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities.
A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.
Earth endures; Stars abide...
Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love Him was happiness;--to love Him in others' virtues.