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
We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns.
Man was born to be rich, or to inevitably grow rich, by the use of his faculties: by the union of thought with nature.
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.
Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none.
The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure.
A weed is a plant we've found no use for yet.
The divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition.
Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.
Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.
A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.
I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.
As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.