Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement. This “Sage of Concord, Massachusetts” wrote Self-Reliance (1841) and other critical essays that have since achieved the status of holy writ.
Born in Boston, Emerson was deeply influenced by his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson. Even though she was not formally educated, she was talented and was widely read. She introduced Emerson to diverse philosophies and spiritual values—including the Hindu scriptures that he would revisit in his later years. It was Aunt Mary that motivated many of Emerson’s famous aphorisms, “Always do what you are afraid to do,” and “Despise trifles,” and “Oh, blessed, blessed poverty.”
Emerson got into Harvard at 14. There, he began keeping journals, which he called his “savings bank.” Later in life, he suggested this practice to his friend and protégé, the philosopher and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau.
Emerson was an average student and graduated in the middle of his Harvard Divinity School class. In the tradition of many family members before him, he became a Unitarian minister. However, in 1832, after his wife Ellen died of tuberculosis at the age of 19, he was deeply distressed and started to have misgivings about the teachings of the church.
Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and became a protégé of the Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle. After returning to America, he embarked on an exceptional literary career. In his book Nature (1836,) Emerson first introduced Transcendentalism, the idea that spiritual truth could be gained by intuition rather than by traditional doctrine or text.
Emerson was also a wisdom writer and an acclaimed public lecturer. Many of his essays began as journal entries, then developed into lectures, and later refined for publication. He gave some 1,500 speeches in his lifetime about not only his philosophical tenets but also individuality and freedom.
Emerson’s essays and lectures had a profound influence on the philosophers, authors, and poets who came after him. Most prominently, his beliefs and his idealism were strong influences on the works of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, as well as numerous others. His writings are considered masterpieces of 19th-century American literature, religion, and thought.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Poetry
The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Art
The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Self-reliance, Independence
There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Exaggeration
‘Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: God
The years teach us much the days never knew.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Genius
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Achievement, Memory, Success & Failure, General, Miscellaneous, Live-now
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Value of a Day, Time Management
It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Effort, Performance
Beware of what you want-for you will get it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Desires
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Face, Faces
A woman’s strength is the irresistible might of weakness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Weakness
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Time Management, Time, Productivity, Carpe-diem
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptations we resist.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Temptation, Control
We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Conflict, Doing Your Best
In like manner the effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. The great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Great, New, Action, Life, Act
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith’s.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no strong performance without a little fascination in the performer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Boldness, Commitment, Action, Dedication
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Reality, Books, Reading
Beauty rests on necessities.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Beauty
That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Persuasion
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Critics, Criticism
A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.—What he quotes he fills with his own voice and humor, and the whole cyclopedia of his table-talk is presently believed to be his own.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Quotations
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Society
If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Thoughts, Thought
If we must accept fate, we are not less compelled to assert liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.—We are sure, though we know not how, that necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Liberty
A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Anger
A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Wine
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Genius
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