Ralph Waldo Emerson

Born

in Boston, Massachusetts, The United States

May 25, 1803

Died

April 27, 1882

Website

https://ffrf.org/news/day/dayitems/item/14338-r...

Genre

Philosophy, Poetry, Essays

Influences

Robert Ingersoll, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Taylor Col ...more

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in 1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a lif ...more

Combine Editions
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Books

Average rating: 4.08 · 50,499 ratings · 1,800 reviews · 1,049 distinct works · Similar authors

	Self-Reliance and Other Essays 4.14 avg rating — 13,855 ratings — published 1844 — 31 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Peter Norberg (Editor) 3.97 avg rating — 11,247 ratings — published 1856 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Self-Reliance 4.05 avg rating — 4,656 ratings — published 1841 — 64 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Oliver (Introduction), Brooks Atkinson (Editor) 4.35 avg rating — 2,848 ratings — published 1983 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Essays and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (Editor) 4.28 avg rating — 2,479 ratings — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nature and Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Larzer Ziff (Editor, Introduction by) 4.13 avg rating — 1,516 ratings — published 1836 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nature 3.86 avg rating — 2,254 ratings — published 1836 — 97 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (Editor), Jean Ferguson Carr (Editor) 4.27 avg rating — 1,643 ratings — published 1876 — 162 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Portable Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Bode, Malcolm Cowley 4.22 avg rating — 356 ratings — published 1946 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Larzer Ziff (Editor) 3.95 avg rating — 365 ratings — published 1876 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Ralph Waldo Emerson…

Quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: accomplishment, attributed-no-source, be-yourself, conformity, individuality

57510 likes

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: happiness

29234 likes

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: life, regrets

16408 likes

See all Ralph Waldo Emerson's quotes »

Polls

Which writer would you most like to see in a Speedo?

F. Scott Fitzgerald

83 votes, 43.9%

Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 votes, 13.2%

Gertrude Stein

16 votes, 8.5%

Geoffrey Chaucer

15 votes, 7.9%

Cotton Mather

11 votes, 5.8%

Henry Kissinger

10 votes, 5.3%

Jonathan Franzen

10 votes, 5.3%

Pearl S. Buck

9 votes, 4.8%

Glenn Beck

8 votes, 4.2%

Noah Webster

2 votes, 1.1%

189 total votes

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