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
This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life depends upon one's actions.
The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.
And striving to be Man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life.
Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent and ragged.
Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.
Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.
There is no true orator who is not a hero.
Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.
Difference of opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive.
God is Unity, but always works in variety.
As every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.