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
In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love Him was happiness;--to love Him in others' virtues.
Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.
There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding.
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
There is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.
The only true gift is a portion of yourself.
Some of your hurts you have cured, / And the sharpest you still have survived, / But what torments of grief you endured / From evils which never arrived!
The artist must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.
The art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.