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
To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.
He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter.
The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.
The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul.
That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen.
Other world? There is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact.
We live ruins amid ruins.
Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.
Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout...
There the great Planter plants Of fruitful worlds the grain, And with a million spells enchants The souls that walk in pain.
The thing done avails, and not what is said about it.
One can never truly savor success until first tasting adversity.