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
Thou art to me a delicious torment.
And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.
Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!-it seems to say,-there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.
Romeo, of dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens fine. Life, with this pair, has no other aim, asks no more,than Juliet,--than Romeo.
Culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers, as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the political status of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tis king against king. It is ever a romance of history in all dynasties--the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. It creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and to which he must often succumb.
All mankind love a lover.
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.