Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.
The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.
“The years teach much the days never know.”
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”
“Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.”
“You are constantly invited to be what you are.”
“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”
“Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.”
“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”
“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.”
“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.”
“Nature and books belong to all who see them.”
“I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.”
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.”
“To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.”
“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
“Every wall is a door.”
“The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, feeds upon itself.”
“Things are in the saddle,And ride mankind.”
“A man in debt is so far a slave.”
“The only true gift is a portion of thyself.”
“There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.”
“It is a happy talent to know how to play.”
“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”
“Scatter joy!”
“It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.”
“It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
“Give all to love;Obey thy heart....”
“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.”
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.”
“Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.”
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows...”
“Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.”
“Beauty without expression is boring.”
“The student is to read history actively not passively.”
“Life is a journey, not a destination.”
“He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.”
“Everything Real Is Self-Existent.”
“For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.”
“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
“A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.”
“I am the owner of the sphere,Of the seven stars and the solar year,of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.”
“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”
“As we grow old...the beauty steals inward.”