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
Rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy, but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitual.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The flowering of civilization is the finished man—the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power—the gentleman.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings, Beauty
Skill to do comes of doing.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Tyranny
The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Adventure
Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Miscellaneous, Slavery
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Better
Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Friendship
We live by our imagination, our admirations, and our sentiments.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Imagination
The walking of Man is falling forwards.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Progress
The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Friendship
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Beliefs, Civilization, Property
People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know. That is an august entertainment, and would suffice me a great while. To know a little would be worth the expense of this world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Knowledge
Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Security
When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Master, Spirit
Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Friendship, Blessings, Stupidity
Only poetry inspires poetry.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Poetry
We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Change, Difficulty, Brave
A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Faith, Belief
The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Culture
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Quotations
I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose…
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Purpose
Hope writes the poetry of the boy, but memory that of the man. Man looks forward with smiles, but backward with sighs. Such is the wise providence of God. The cup of life is sweetness at the brim—the flavor is impaired as we drink deeper, and the dregs are made bitter that we may not struggle when it is taken from our lips.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Hope
Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Fools, Society
Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Talent
Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Philosophy
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Friendship, Gratitude
Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Proverbs
Our distrust is very expensive.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Trust
Our globe discovers its bidden virtues, not only in heroes and arch-angels, but in gossips and nurses.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Gossip
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Helping
Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Deception
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Nature
Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is noninterference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and persevering.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Wealth
The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of Solitaire. It is a grand passion.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Topics: Passion
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