Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 May 1803
CountryUnited States of America
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
No facts to me are sacred; none are profane.
I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.
The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen.
But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.
The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by redemption of the soul.
Wherever the truth is injured, defend it.
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
This ennui, for which we Saxons had no name,--this word of France, has got a terrific significance. It shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light.
The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold