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
For beauty is God's handwriting...A nd, thank God for it as a cup of His blessing.
When the night is darkest, the stars come out.
Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
Manners are the happy ways of doing things.
Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a stone; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.
What you are shouts at me so loudly that I can't hear a word you say.
Teach me your mood, O patient stars. Who climb each night, the ancient sky. leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die.
Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. . . . What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascent, that this is the road to the stars.
Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.
When you strike at a king, you must kill him.
Every reform was once a private opinion.
Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?
Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.