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…
Right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind’s eye to read its oracles.
The difficulty is that we do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made.
We are very near to greatness. One step and we are safe. Can we not take the leap?
Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them?
Each mind has its own method.
Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow you will arrive there and know them by inhabiting them.
There is always safety in valor.
You think it is because I have an income which exempts me from your day-labor, that I waste (as you call it) my time in sun-gazing and star-gazing. You do not know me. If my debts, as they threaten, should consume what money I have, I should live just as I do now: I should eat worse food, and wear a coarser coat, and should wander in a potato patch instead of in the wood — but it is I, and not my twelve hundred dollars a year, that love God.