
Since Waldo was the name Ralph Waldo Emerson preferred to be called, and because I’m convinced he’d introduce himself to posterity as Waldo, that’s how we know him here as we share his warmth, wit, and wisdom with you.
N.B. – The passage of nearly two centuries has inspired me to edit some locutions; sometimes for clarity, more often for the benefit of readers who don’t feel addressed when Emerson employs masculine pronouns to denote everybody.
What poets need
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which to work, the due temperance of which restrains the art. Thus supported by the people, the poet has the strength and leisure required to give voice to the audacities of the imagination.” – Shakespeare; or The Poet
It’s a conspiracy!
“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the integrity of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the better securing of bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue most demanded is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.
Society doesn’t love realities and creators, but names and customs. The maintenance of personal integrity requires non-conformity.” – Essay on Self-reliance
Enough with the lies
“It is alike your interest, and mine, and everybody’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine. And, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.” – Essay on Self-reliance
the origin of the stained glass window
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which churches are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.” – Essay on History
“What can I do against … barbarism, in my country?”
“We have too little power of resistance against this ferocity which champs us up. What front can we make against these unavoidable, victorious, maleficient forces?
What can I do against the influence of genetics in my history? What can I do against hereditary and constitutional habits, against diseases? against climate, barbarism, in my country?
I can reason down or deny everything except fate….” – Essay on Fate
“…the march of civilisation a train of felonies,”
“Things seem to tend downward, to justify despondency, to promote rogues, to defeat the just; and by knaves, as by martyrs, the just cause is carried forward.
Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be handed over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government changes, and the march of civilisation a train of felonies, yet general ends are somehow answered.
We see, now, events forced on, which seem to retard or retrograde the civility of ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot drown him.” – Montaigne, or the Sceptic
“…learn to skate”
“The cold is inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion.” – Fate
“The reward of a thing well done…”
“Work in every hour, paid or unpaid. See only that you work and you cannot avoid the reward; whether your work is fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, as long as it is honest work, done to the best of your ability, you will be rewarded; no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.” – New England Reformers
“Art expresses the one or the same by the different”
“Art expresses the one or the same by the different. Thought seeks to know unity in unity; poetry to show it by variety; that is, always by an object or symbol.” – Plato; or, the Philosopher
Waldo says this about Plato: “His illustrations are poetry, and his jests illustrative. Socrates’ profession of obstretic art is good philosophy; and his finding that word ‘cookery’ and ‘adulatory art’, for rhetoric, in the Gorgias, does us substantial service still. No orator can measure in effect with him who can give good nicknames.” – Plato; or, the Philosopher
how to read Ralph Waldo Emerson
If big ideas were as valuable as nickles are, then I’d be rich enough to afford cable TV! But they’re not, so, without TV, I must content myself with library books. One that has proved more entertaining than an entire box-set of The Apprentice on DVD, is the Library of America’s edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays & Lectures. How cool would it be if Here’s Waldo becomes as popular as Where’s Waldo was fifteen years ago?
For book-free reading, check this out (in new window): The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, U. of Michigan.