Quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

me; and which, as they have always been in the world, and perhaps reappear to every bard, may be both history and prophecy. 'The foundations

This outlook, one that said that American history must be the history of nature speaking through men, not of men shaping nature, became the single most powerful force in American intellectual life in the nineteenth century and shaped some of America's greatest works of literature, such as Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass and Walden, as well as generating an American school of philosophy , to be furthered by William James and John Dewey.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Spiritual Laws," Essays and Lectures . (Library of America November 15, 1983)

A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

There is a crack in every thing God has made.

was a melancholy introvert who declined to join in philosophical discussions.)   The Concord circle of sympathetically-minded thinkers, writers, and social activists became known as Transcendentalists. What exactly is Transcendentalism? That's the question Emerson set out to answer at Boston's Masonic Temple in 1842. In addition to defining his own philosophy, this lecture planted the seeds of the modern self-help and personal development movements.

The scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge

the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

Every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth,—is the fundamental law of criticism.

Lose yourself in nature and find peace.