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
The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both.
The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts.
Language is fossil Poetry.
The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .
The finest poetry was first experience.
For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.
The true poem is the poet's mind.
The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.
Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.
We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours.
For this present, hard Is the fortune of the bard, Born out of time; All his accomplishment, From Nature's utmost treasure spent, Booteth not him.
There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.
Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.