The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Ralph Waldo Emerson”

Against the Cult of Originality: Emerson on the True Nature of Genius
Against the Cult of Originality: Emerson on the True Nature of Genius

“Great genial power… consists… in being altogether receptive.”

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Emerson on How to Trust Yourself and What Solitude Really Means
Emerson on How to Trust Yourself and What Solitude Really Means

“It is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

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Trailblazing 19th-Century Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Social Change and the Life of the Mind
Trailblazing 19th-Century Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Social Change and the Life of the Mind

“Reformers are apt to forget… that the world is not made up entirely of the wicked and the hungry, there are persons hungry for the food of the mind, the wants of which are as imperious as those of the body.”

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How to Keep Criticism from Sinking Your Soul: Walt Whitman and the Discipline of Creative Confidence
How to Keep Criticism from Sinking Your Soul: Walt Whitman and the Discipline of Creative Confidence

“I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.”

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Against Busyness and Surfaces: Emerson on Living with Presence and Authenticity
Against Busyness and Surfaces: Emerson on Living with Presence and Authenticity

On cultivating “the power to swell the moment from the resources of our own heart until it supersedes sun & moon & solar system in its expanding immensity.”

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Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves
Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves

“Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.”

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Maria Mitchell’s Telescope and the Kickstarting of Popular Astronomy: The Heartening Story of the World’s First Crowdfunding Campaign for Science
Maria Mitchell’s Telescope and the Kickstarting of Popular Astronomy: The Heartening Story of the World’s First Crowdfunding Campaign for Science

“Patient thought, patient labor, and firmness of purpose are almost omnipotent.”

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The Conflicted Love Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller: How an Intense Unclassifiable Relationship Shaped the History of Modern Thought
The Conflicted Love Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller: How an Intense Unclassifiable Relationship Shaped the History of Modern Thought

We suffer by wanting different things often at odds with one another, but we suffer even more by wanting to want different things.

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Figuring
Figuring

A book.

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Emerson on Individual Integrity and Resisting the Tyranny of the Masses
Emerson on Individual Integrity and Resisting the Tyranny of the Masses

“Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence… I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.”

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