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
Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.
Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.
And the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.
The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far.
Let us advance on Chaos and the Dark
When it is dark enough, men see the stars.
When it's dark enough men see stars.
In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.
So . . . I feel in regard to this aged England . . . pressed upon by transitions of trade and . . . competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.
Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence
These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike
Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great