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 German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.
The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith
Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
Want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover.
Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.
Our chief want in life, is, someone who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great.
But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go.
If you want a friend you need to be a friend.
Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.
Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.
Society cannot do without cultivated men. As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher wants become imperative.
A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants.