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
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.
What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.
We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
What a new face courage puts on everything!
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
Insist on yourself. Never imitate.
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.
When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near.
It is in rugged crises, in unbearable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of the question, that the angel is shown.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief in denying them.
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.