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
Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.
Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.
Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold
All history is biography.
To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.
Doing well is a result of doing good.
Build therefore your own world.
The sun shines today also.
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant
Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.
Imitation cannot go above its model.