RALPH WALDO EMERSON


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Ralph Waldo Emerson

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our health is our sound relation to external objects; our sympathy with external being.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
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This quotation was used by the Siemens Corporation to thank award-winning Federal civil servants who had received the Service to America Medal.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
© User:Scewingderivative work: 2009
Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Born: May 25, 1803
  • Died: April 27, 1882
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Poet
Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

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