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
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.
Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.
Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.