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
Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great
A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us
In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.
The fundaments of a person are not in substance, but in spirits.
The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions --an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is: Let there be truth between us two forevermore
The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.
The maxim of the tyrant, 'If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.