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
Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
The years teach much which the days never know.
The world is plentiful with honey, but only the humble bee can collect it.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Life is a festival only to the wise.
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.
It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.
Wisdom is infused into every form.