Happy Birthday, Ralph Waldo Emerson!

[eldritchhobbit]

Happy birthday to Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May, 1803 – 27 April, 1882)!

"Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Literary Ethics" (1838)

Comments

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

One of my heroes, all the back to high school days, when I was given an excellent introduction to American literature.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Definitely good hero material!

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I may have said this before, but if (when?) you ever come to Massachusetts, I'll take you to his gravesite. And his mansion.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

That would be brilliant! I would love it.