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
Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The louder he talked of his honesty, the quicker we counted the silverware.
We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;--and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?
When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint.
Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.
The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.