Quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson

More Quotes From

Additional Sources

Emerson in His Journals , ed. by Joel Porte (1982).:"Nominalist and Realist" Essays, Second Series (1844)"Ability" English Traits (1856)"Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1844" Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903)"Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1884" Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903)

Related Subjects

society (7) self (5) solitude (4) work (2) anarchism (2) human nature (2) mankind (2) soul (2) greatness (2) responsibility (2)

Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "New England Reformers," Essays, Second Series (1844).

This is another clear articulation that Emersonian individualism is not a form of separatism but a specific, utopian vision of community, where, left alone to discover the eternal soul in each one of us, we eventually come together for the common good.

Cite this source Embed this quotation

Surprise me with a

The Columbia World of Quotations © 1996, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, the following are prohibited: copying substantial portions or the entirety of the work in machine readable form, making multiple printouts thereof, and other uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws.

Partners:Word Bloglines Citysearch The Daily Beast Ask Answers Ask Kids Life123 Reference Sendori