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
In the woods we return to reason and faith.
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.
Everything in our world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
You think that your silence on certain topics, perhaps in the face of injustice, or unkindness, or mean-spiritedness, causes others to reserve judgement of you. Far otherwise; your silence utters very loud: you have no oracle to speak, no wisdom to offer, and your fellow men have learned that you cannot help them. Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? We would be well to do likewise.
...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.
The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.