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
If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.
Wait, and thy soul shall speak.
My own mind is the direct revelation which I have from God and far least liable to mistake in telling his will of any revelation.
There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.
What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women.
A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture.
The great majority of men grow up and grow old in seeming and following.
Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men.
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?
Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.
Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.
No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.
The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.
How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.