Ralph Waldo Emerson

Figurative language is language that goes beyond the literal meanings of words to create an enhanced effect. One example of figurative language Emerson uses in this essay is the following: the...

In "The Poet," Emerson writes: For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The...

While Emerson would be pleased at elementary education's advancement, he would say there is more to do to create a system of formal elementary instruction that maximizes student choice. Emerson was...

The great Transcendentalist who wrote Nature perceives in the bureaucracies of public school the "costly machinery against nature" in which the modes of education aim to save labor and expedite...

American author, philosopher, and leader of the transcendentalist movement Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) presented his impassioned “Address on the Fugitive Slave Law” to the people of Concord,...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "Sursum Corda" is a short work that highlights the power of the Holy Spirit and its intents and comings and goings as the wind. The poem is one stanza of eleven lines....

This is an essay in which Emerson presents his typically Transcendentalist views on education, arguing against the traditional education system and broadening the term in our thinking to encompass...

Certainly there are many such incidents of discovering the beauty of nature in the everyday that I could quote, but I guess if I had to pick one, it would have to be when I climbed up a mountain in...

I think you can extrapolate a lot of metaphors from "nurse." Two that I believe Emerson was going for are "to nurture" and "provide sustenance or entice." Emerson may have been describing schools...

Did you mean Emerson's essay, entitled "Circles"?In "Circles" Emerson compares the eye and horizon to circles with all of nature following this pattern: "The eye is the...

"The Poet" by Emerson is a difficult essay to follow, without a doubt. It needs time and patience, best broken down paragraph by paragraph, to understand it. Emerson explains how the poet fits...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Transcendentalist, felt that the self is an autonomous spirit which acts according to universal moral laws. Located in all objects, this spiritual self develops from...

For individualism and conformity, I would start with Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” You can find elements of individualism, nature and conformity in their other...

Margaret Fuller, in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, advocated for the rights of people to whom they had been denied in US society, especially women but also enslaved African Americans. Feminism...

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote extensively on nature, to the extent that he wrote more than one work with this title. It seems you are here referring specifically to Emerson's poetic output rather than...

An imperative sentence can do a number of things, but they all amount to one goal: an imperative sentence tells someone what to do. Most often, they amount to a command or a piece of instruction....

Emerson's quote, "It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do,'" could be understood as follows. First, Emerson's use of "high counsel"...

The poet, according to Emerson, has to be just about everything. He has to be a seer into the soul of man, he must be an interpreter and a prophet. I know not how it is that we need an...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born a New Englander and later became a transcendentalist, and these two formative aspects of his life contributed to his sturdy belief in self-reliance. His essay entitled...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's protégé Henry David Thoreau had more experience and inspiration with regard to solitude as he spent so much time living in isolation and seclusion (by choice). In March 1845,...

The text that I can find of this essay by Emerson gives the following in the thirteenth paragraph: Whilst thus the world exists for the mind; whilst thus the man is ever invited inward into...

In one sense, Edgar Allan Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson are both Romantics because both privilege the individual and the individual's unique emotions and experiences. Emerson directly advocates for...

What he's trying to say here is that you shouldn't spend a lot of time trying to think about stuff or whine about stuff, but rather take everything as it comes, deal with what life gives you. In...

In this poem, Emerson refers to Eros and the Muse as twins. Eros is erotic love—which Emerson understands as a creative force. Eros is the "love" of the poem's title. The Muse is the idea that...

Perhaps the main difference between a rebel and a reformer is that a rebel will usually attack and attempt to destroy the system they find objectionable while a reformer seeks to change it from...

Emerson subscribed to a new theory of education: he and other transcendentalists did not believe that the child is simply an empty vessel to be filled up with facts and figures; rather, the child's...

Being conventional is the same as being traditional: a conformist. If one conforms to the general mores, ideologies, and thoughts of a particular time and place, one conforms without thinking,...

Emerson is a transcendentalist. He believes that personal experience is by far the best way to learn about things. As a result, Emerson strongly believes in individual freedom. This is especially...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 and died in 1882. Thus, he lived through a period of major social and political turmoil, perhaps more than any other time in American history. He witnessed the...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "The Poet" discusses the poet's role in society and the qualities that make up a true poet. He believes that poets are visionaries who are able to receive and...

Oh my gosh, PLEASE don't use the term "theology" here in regards to Transcendentalism. I had to spend an entire class period convincing one of my more fundamentalist Christian students that I was...

This passage comes from the fourth section of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s major essay “Nature” (1836). This essay is one of the defining documents of the nineteenth-century American literary,...

Emerson's primary contribution to the Transcendental movement was the assertion of individual voice in all circumstances. Emerson's belief in human "transcendence," the ability to perceive and...

The concept is rooted in Emerson's readings of eastern philosophies such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Advaita Vadanta school of Hindu philosophy. In addition, Emerson further elaborated the concept...

In my mind, the primary difference between Emerson and Thoreau is the one between theory and practice. Both thinkers preached individualism in thought and rejecting the conformist ways of modern...

Emerson was raised within a Calvinistic society by a father who was a Unitarian minister. Even though he was raised in a society which supported Calvinistic theology, Emerson followed his own path...

In this speech, Emerson denounces both politicians and ordinary people. He says that they are both complicit in the evils of slavery and that they have shown their lack of moral fiber. Emerson is...

Concerning Emerson's views on the poet's nature and function, I can give you only a limited answer, but since no one else has answered yet, I'll give you what I can. Looking at two specific poems,...

In "The Drunken Boat," the speaker is a boat whose human occupants have been killed by Indians. It floats aimlessly, wandering and weaving like a drunken person as it is pushed and pulled by the...

Whereas Europe, the Old World, had a breadth and depth of cultural sophistication, based on ancient precedent, the all-too-recently founded United States (mid-1800s), in terms of arts and letters,...

If you are looking for poetry by either Emerson or Thoreau which depicts examples of why their texts are considered Transcendental, you may want to look at the following poems (both poets were...

Many abolitionists, such as Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe, were inflamed by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, thinking it a step backwards into barbarity. Many, such as Stowe, thought slavery was...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was influenced greatly my his Aunt Mary Moody. She was his fathers sister. His father died when Emerson was 8. According to Frank Shulman: The influence of Hindu scriptures and...

There was an interesting philosophical discussion going on in Emerson's time about the way we "learn" about or apprehend the world. Locke and others had posited that everything we learn...

I did a search on Google and was able to find the second quotation for you: Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none. It was...