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 find in life exactly what we put into it
Great men exist that there might be greater men.
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch...
Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.
All the devils respect virtue.
Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.
Genius is power, talent is applicability.
Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.
It is God in you that responds to God without, or affirms his own words trembling on the lips of another.
Five great enemies of peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride.
Why has my motley diary no jokes? Because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone.
All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words.
Quotation confesses inferiority.
Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. The mind does not create what it perceives, anymore than the eye creates the rose.