(1803–1882)
U.S. essayist, poet, and philosopher“By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.”
more infosource: “Quotation and Originality,” in The Complete Prose Works (London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1891), 614.
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category: quotation
medium: Essay
“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.”
more infosource: “Friendship,” in Essays (Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher ), 220.
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category: friendship
medium: essay
“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
more infosource: “The American Scholar,” in The American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Compensation (New York: American Book Company, 1911), 42.
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category: era, human condition, technology, time
medium: nonfiction
notes: epigraph to Hamlet's BlackBerry by William Powers
“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.”
more infosource: Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 3 (Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Co., 1880), 267.
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category: discovery, gate, opportunity, perspective, world
medium: nonfiction
via: Nellie Perera“The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”
more infosource: “Compensation,” in The Spritual Emerson (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 130.
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category: breakthrough, change, death, grief, love, mourning
medium: nonfiction
Ralph Waldo Emerson