Quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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)

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Our life seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- flowing vigor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

"Prospect" is a favorite word of Emerson's, implying, as it does, future fortunes, a place from which to gain an outlook, and a mining camp. All of these ideas can serve as metaphors for the Emersonian task.

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