Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803 – 1882

Born in Boston Massachusetts

American essayist and poet

Lecturer, philosopher, and abolitionist

Leader of the transcendentalist movement 

Went to Harvard College when he was 14 years old

Was a good friend of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Prince Achille Murat

Met with Abraham Lincoln in 1862 to discuss the elimination of slavery

Henry David Thoreau was his good friend

Led Transcendentalist movement

Championed individualism

Published dozens of essays and more than 1,500 public lectures

Influenced American thinking, his speech “The American Scholar” in 1837, is considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence” -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Essays: First Series

• Published in 1841.
• Essays included are: “Self Reliance,” “Compensation,” “Spiritual Laws,” “Love,” “Friendship,” “Prudence,” “Heroism,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” “Intellect,” “Art.”

Essays: Second Series

• Published in 1844. 
• Essays included are: “The Poet,” “Experience,” “Character,” “Manners,” “Gifts,” “Nature,” “Politics,” “Nominalist and Realist,” and “New England Reformers.”

Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else;
and for everything you gain, you lose something.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world looks like a multiplication table, or a mathematical equation,
which, turn it how you will, balances itself.
Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When there is no vision, people perish.

Ralph Waldo Emerson