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 adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.
Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor.
Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactors.
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many.
He is great who confers the most benefits.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

‹ Prev

Next ›