Ralph Waldo Emerson

Blurbs

About me:

The law of water and all fluids is true of wit. Prince Metternich said, "Revolutions begin in the best heads and run steadily down to the populace." It is a very old observation ; not truer because Metternich said it, and not less true. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. Give all to love; obey thy heart. God enters by a private door into every individual. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live. Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints. Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think. Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air… Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art. Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. 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.....

Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise: Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice.

Interests

General
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character. Come bad chance, and we add to it our strength, and we teach it art and length, itself o'er us to advance. The intellect is a consoler, which delights in detaching, or putting an interval between a man and his fortune, and so converts the sufferer into a spectator, and his pain into poetry. It yields the joys of conversation, of letters, and of science. Hence also the torments of life become tuneful tragedy, solemn and soft with music, and garnished with rich dark pictures. But higher still than the activities of art, the intellect in its purity, and the moral sense in its purity, are not distinguished from each other, and both ravish us into a region whereinto these passionate clouds of sorrow cannot rise.
Heroes
Every hero becomes a bore at last.