Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Emerson served as a junior pastor in Boston’s Second Church, but after his first wife’s death, he began to disagree with the church’s methods, eventually leading to his resignation. Upon his return home from a tour of Europe in 1833 he began writing his first published essay, Nature. In March 1837 Emerson gave a series of lectures on the philosophy of history in Boston, which began his career as a lecturer. He eventually gave as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across the United States. He disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures.
Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson…
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys… He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives. There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit.
A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favourable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. Through it, the soul first knows itself. It corrects the capital mistake of the infant man, who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages from another — by showing the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason… then, deep melodies wander through his soul from Supreme Wisdom.
All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power.
Give me health and a day, and I will make ridiculous the pomp of emperors.
There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.
Don’t be a cynic, and bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
