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
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
Do what you fear and your fear will die.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.
We seldom see anybody who is not uneasy or afraid to live.
They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.
Fear is a great instructor.
Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is. The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers.
If I quake, what matters it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors.
Nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws.
Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,--a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.
Man begins life helpless. The babe is in paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self-protection that mothers say the salvation of the life and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle.