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
These times of ours are series and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.
Let us leave hurry to slaves.
Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.
Today is a king in disguise.
Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.
Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.
Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.
We grant no dukedoms to the few, We hold like rights and shall; Equal on Sunday in the pew, On Monday in the mall. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal.
In analysing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.
To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame; to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine men.