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
Heroism feels and never reasons and is therefore always right.
In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
I see it only that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the supreme being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.
I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk but after the counsel of his own bosom.
The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.
When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.
Nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.
To this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Heroism... It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will...
Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.
A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for 10 minutes longer.