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
Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent, but Intelligence.
The man for whom the law exists - the man of forms, the conservative - is a tame man.
The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.
The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.
Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again; never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear.
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. Hence, the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees.
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.
Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals; - The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.
Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.