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."
Emerson means to say in quote #3 that in order to live life fully, one must bring themselves to take risks. In his social life and his self-immersion in nature, Emerson would have conducted his own "experiments" to determine the best path through life. Most of us, as high schoolers, also conduct experiments each day to explore our interests and how best to navigate our lives, even when these risks we take may end poorly on occasion.
ReplyDeleteI interpret the quote (#12) the emphasize the temporal nature of individuals while expressing the continuity of humanity as a whole. This quote uses the metaphor of a wave moving forward to express that individuals are similar to particles of water, in that while the wave of society progresses the people that constitute that society are always changing. I feel that Emerson meant that society always moves forward whilst the constituent people, the orchestrators of such change, live only for a brief time.
ReplyDelete5. Hobgoblin is a metaphor. "Speak what you think... in hard woods again" is parallelism, and that whole sentence "though it contradict... to-day" is a paradox, since it's two contradicting ideas (instead of words, in which it would be an oxymoron). this quote speaks to me because it is very much the truth. There is nothing more boring and unexceptionable than someone who is exactly like everybody else. to be misunderstood is to be different and to be different is to be great.
ReplyDeleteQuote #12
ReplyDeleteThis quote uses a metaphor to compare the society to a wave that achieves its destination but the particles of the wave do not. The society, in Ralph Emerson's point of view, is similar to a wave, because even though it achieves what the general goal of the crowd is, the individuals don't benefit from it.
#9 This quote to me especially resonates in the modern world just as much, or even more so, as when Ralph Waldo was alive. The quote makes a witty remark about how idle time can either be wasted or used to do something magnificent, either way it is invaluable. Waldo uses an uncut diamond to describe idle time because unless you cut the diamond and make it beautiful then it is virtually worthless.
ReplyDelete3. This quote by Emerson explains how if you are reserved and do not act on impulse, you are not living life to the fullest. As his says, life is one big experiment, where you can both succeed and fail, trial and error, yet if you are timid at the thought of failure, nothing will be gained. This quote reminds me of the Wayne Gretzky quote, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take", which similarly signifies you will never succeed, if you do not try or experiment in the first place.
ReplyDelete#3
ReplyDeleteEmerson is saying that without taking action and chances in your life, you don't live. By being afraid and uncertain with the actions you take means that you're not sure about yourself and what you do. Life is about experimenting and then knowing the outcomes of that experiment.
I believe that this quote(#6) means that a truly great person neither satisfies the society's expectation in making his or her decision nor secludes oneself from the society to avoid social pressure but instead acts independently and confidently while living among the people. This quote reflects some transcendentalist values such as confidence, self-reliance, and mindfulness. Emerson certainly acknowledges the limit that human beings have, but encourages us to overcome and surpass the limit and aim for higher goals to be excellent, especially in the spiritual sense of greatness.
ReplyDeleteReaction to #9- I agree with this statement that is saying you should use your spare time wisely because you only live life once. If you don't do anything with your spare time then you are wasting away a lot of your life. If you do things in your spare time, those things will stand out the most because it was your choice to do it and not somebody forcing you.
ReplyDeleteNumber 4:“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
ReplyDeleteI interpret this quote to mean that my past and future experiences are of no comparison to the person i am on the inside. The past trials and errors i have witnessed and taken part in do not and should not determine the type of person i am or will be because what's done is done and i can't reverse the past but only learn from it. Though my future can be either promising or bright, it doesn't affect the person i am on the inside because in order to move forward and proceed into any type of future, i must have the bravery and the strength: both mentally and physically, to do so.
QUOTE #3:
ReplyDeleteI agree with Emerson's idea in this quote because he is simply saying that you have to take risks and not be afraid in order to succeed in the future. If you make a mistake, all you can do is learn from it. Whether your "experiment" fails or succeeds it will somehow better you in the long run.
8. This means that it is important for you to be thankful for all of the good in your life, but also to appreciate the importance that the bad has in shaping the kind of person you have become. It is necessary for you to recognize all of the things, good and bad, as integral parts of creating who you are and be grateful for them. Bad things happen to everyone, learning from them and showing gratitude for them is how you can become a better person
ReplyDelete7. This quote explains that the events some may think of as insignificant, such as eating or reading, help shape who we are as people. Every decision, no matter how small, reflects our thoughts, ideas, and personality. These small decisions are what define us to both ourselves and the people around us.
ReplyDelete3. "Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
ReplyDeleteEmerson suggests that individuals should be brave to take actions and think less of making mistakes.He insists this point by comparing life and experiment, stating that both of them need courage and mistakes as necessary steps to proceed. People may fail to find some answers in life at once, but if the fear of failure overtake people's willing to try, they will never find the answers, or even any clues.