Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master".

Quotes

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
We are prisoners of ideas.
If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.
The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Intelligence
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
Work is victory.
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Knowledge
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.

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