As you have discovered from his writings, Ralph Waldo Emerson was an man of profound thought and incisive observation. His calls to live simply and understand ourselves through the natural world around us have resonance even in, perhaps especially in, today's society.
Your task is to choose one of the following Emerson quotes and explain what you believe it means. You may wish to include examples from your own life, or what you know about transcendentalism, to help illustrate your point. Please use no more than three sentences. You must post your response by the end of class.
Please write the number of the quote in your response so I know which one you picked.This assignment is worth one homework grade.
1. "A man in debt is so far a slave."
2. “Finish every 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.”
3. "Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
4. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
5. “Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
6. “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; 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.”
7. “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
8. “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
9. “Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
10. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statemen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do"
11. "Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare."
12. "Society is a wave. The wave moves forward, but the water of which it is composed does not."
