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 curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.
Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.
Every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?
By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.
No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function; living is the functionary.
The secret of the world is the tie between person and event. Person makes event and event person.
The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. Clubs produce oftener words.
The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air.
People who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.
Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.
Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.
I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.