Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a famous American essayist and one of America's most influential thinkers and writers.

Quotations

"I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul."

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("The American Scholar", 1837)

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"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

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("Self-Reliance", 1841)

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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

Related Topics:
Pythagoras - Socrates - Jesus - Luther - Copernicus - Galileo - Newton

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("Self-Reliance", 1841)

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"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

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("Self-Reliance", 1841)

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"Our moods do not believe in each other."

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("Circles", 1841)

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"There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls never touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me."

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("Experience", 1844)

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"It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man."

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("Experience", 1844)

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"Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way: Every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote – justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility."

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American Civilization, The Atlantic Monthly (1862)

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