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
It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
The order of things consents to virtue.
The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.
I do not wonder at a snowflake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies.
The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being.
The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour.
If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.
You need not fear to handle the truth roughly. She is no invalid.
Truth has already ceased to be itself if polemically said.
No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.
The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.
It is sublime to think and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus and thus, I know it was right.
There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.
We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance.