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
Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.
Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all kinds,--epic, tragedy, lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve them; they will never forget it.
The Sky is the daily bread of the imagination
The times are the masquerade of the eternities
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful
Things have their laws as well as men; things refuse to be trifled with.
The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that man are convertible.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.
Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances
Every man believes that he has a greater possibility
Do the thing and you will be given the power
Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has, until he has learned to use that little better