Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
— Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He set out its ideas in his 1836 essay Nature, and his 1837 speech "The American Scholar" was hailed as America's intellectual Declaration of Independence.
He wrote most of his essays first as lectures. The two collections of the 1840s, including "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul", hold the core of his thinking: trust in the individual, freedom, and the link between the soul and the world. Nietzsche admired him, Walt Whitman called him his master, and he was a mentor and close friend to Henry David Thoreau.
He wrote most of his essays first as lectures. The two collections of the 1840s, including "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul", hold the core of his thinking: trust in the individual, freedom, and the link between the soul and the world. Nietzsche admired him, Walt Whitman called him his master, and he was a mentor and close friend to Henry David Thoreau.
Most quoted works
- Self-Reliance and Other Essays 18
- Self-Reliance 16
- The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson 15
- Nature 13
- Nature and Selected Essays 5
- Essays: First Series 4
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
— Emerson in His Journals
The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.
— The Portable Emerson
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
— Essays: First and Second Series
The life of truth is cold.
— The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.
— Emerson: Poems
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship
— Nature
Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.
— Spiritual Laws
Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.
— The Tao of Emerson the Tao of Emerson
Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
— Letters and Social Aims
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
— Self-Reliance and Other Essays
A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.
— Representative Men: Seven Lectures
A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.
— Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.
— Culture, Behavior, Beauty, Books, Art, Eloquence, Power, Wealth, Illusions
I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.
— The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.
— Essays: First Series
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
— The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
— Emerson's Essays
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
— Self-Reliance and Other Essays
We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
— The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
— Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Does not… the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound?
— The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
— Self-Reliance
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
— Self-Reliance