Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) was a US philosophic thinker and poet, of English Puritan descent, born at Boston, where he started in life as a Unitarian preacher and pastor, an office he resigned in 1832 for literature, in which he found he would have freer and fuller scope to carry out his purpose as a spiritual teacher. In 1833, he paid a visit to England, and in particular a notable one to Craigenputtock, with the inmates of which he formed a lifelong friendship.On his return the year after, he married, a second time as it happened, and, settling down in Concord, began his career as a lecturer and man of letters. By his "Essays," of which he published two series, one in 1841 and a second in 1844, he commended himself to the regard of all thinking men in both hemispheres, and began to exercise an influence for good on all the ingenuous youth of the generation. They were recognised by Carlyle, and commended as "the voice of a man". These embraced subjects one and all of spiritual interest, and revealed transcendent intellectual power. They were followed by "Representative Men," lectures delivered in Manchester on a second visit to England in 1847, and thereafter, at successive periods, by "Society and Solitude," "English Traits," "The Conduct of Life," "Letters and Social Aims," besides a long array of poems, as well as sundry remarkable Addresses and Lectures, which he published.
He was a man of exceptional endowment and great speculative power, and is to this day the acknowledged head of the literary men of America. Speculatively, Carlyle and he were of the same school, but while Carlyle had "descended" from the first "into the angry, noisy Forum with an argument that could not but exasperate and divide," he continued pretty much all his days engaged in little more than in a quiet survey and criticism of the strife. Carlyle tried hard to persuade him to "descend," but it would appear Emerson never to his dying day understood what Carlyle meant by the appeal, an appeal to take the devil by the throat and cease to merely speculate and dream.
Wisdom & Quotes
- America is a country of young men.
- Art is a jealous mistress.
- A beautiful woman is a practical poet.
- Books are for nothing but to inspire.
- Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
- Every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
- A great man is always willing to be little.
- Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
- I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
- To be great is to be misunderstood.
- We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.
- The less government we have, the better.
- A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
- Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams.
- The sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.
- A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
- A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
- God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
- The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
- Nothing is more vulgar than haste.
- The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
- Every hero becomes a bore at last.
- Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.
- Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent, but intelligence.
- When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
- Language is the archive of history.
- Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
- Good men must not obey the laws too well.
- We are always getting ready to live but never living.
- All mankind love a lover.
- A man is a god in ruins.
- Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
- A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.
- Poverty demoralizes.
- Power is the first good.
- You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God: you shall not have both.
- Life is a search after power.
- Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.
- Pride ruined the angels.
- The saint and poet seek privacy.
- Proverbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
- I hate quotations, tell me what you know.
- Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
- The test of a religion or philosophy is the number of things it can explain.
- In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.
- After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning, excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death.
- People see only what they are prepared to see.
- Here once the embattled farmers stood,
- Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, Concord
- Things have their laws as well as men; things refuse to be trifled with.
- The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.
- No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby, - so helpless and ridiculous.
- Travelling is a fool's paradise.
- God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
- There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.
- Hitch your wagon to a star.
- War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.
- Wise men are not wise at all times.
- Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
- A woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion.
- Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
- All writing comes by the grace of God.
Osceola