Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher, best known for leading the transcendentalist movement. His works, including "Self-Reliance" and "Nature," emphasized individualism, self-improvement, and the spiritual connection between humanity and nature. Emerson’s ideas greatly influenced American literature and philosophy, inspiring figures like Henry David Thoreau.
The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought.
Tags: thought, expression, universal-spirit, seeking-high-from-low-points
All literature writes the character of the wise man. Books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are portraits om which he finds the lineaments he is forming. the silent and eloquent praise him and accost him, and he is stimulated wherever he moves as by personal allusions. A true aspirant, therefore, never needs look for allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but more sweet, of that character he seeks in every word that is said concerning character, yea, further, in every fact and circumstance, —in the running river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the firmament.
Tags: literary-aspiration, inspiration, personal-endeavor, history
Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.
Tags: nature, change, constants, history
It has been said, that 'common souls pay with what they do; nobler souls with that which they are.' And why? Because a profound nature awakens in us by its actions and words, by its very looks and manners, the same power and beauty that a gallery of sculpture, or of pictures, addresses.
Tags: nature, nobility, awakening, beauty, history
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Tags: self-reliance, genius, thought, insight
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
Tags: self-reliance, shared-wisdom, universal-thought
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for the better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
Tags: self-reliance, own-works, envy, imitation
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Tags: self-reliance, independence, solitude, conformity, opinion
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The objection to conforming usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, —under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are.
Tags: self-reliance, objection, conformity, enigma, person-of-character
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut off face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest of hands asinine expression.
Tags: self-reliance, adherence, conformity
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean 'the foolish face of praise,' the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping willingness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.
Tags: self-reliance, communication, behavior, forced-willfulness, lack-of-confidence, the-sake-of-being-offensive, taking-the-offensive-grounds, objectification, superficiality
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson's Rose- "To Live Above Time"
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*Title originated by the site author
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Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say, 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full blown flower there is no more; in the the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Tags: self-reliance, nature, cowardice, time
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.
Tags: self-reliance, love, desire,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities
Tags: self-reliance, adherence, conformity
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean 'the foolish face of praise,' the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping willingness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.
Tags: self-reliance, communication, behavior, forced-willfulness, lack-of-confidence, the-sake-of-being-offensive, taking-the-offensive-grounds, objectification, superficiality
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say, 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full blown flower there is no more; in the the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Tags: self-reliance, cycle-of-nature,
Ralph Waldo Emerson