Emerson, Ralph Waldo

1803 – He was born on the 25th of May this year in Boston, Massachusetts. As a child, he experienced illness, poverty, and the death of a parent.

1812 – He was subsequently sent to the Boston Latin School in 1812 at the age of nine.

1817 - At fourteen Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed Freshman's President, a position which gave him a room free of charge.

1829 – He became Unitarian Minister.

1831 – His brief career as a minister was marred by religious doubt and by his wife's death this year.

1832 – He toured Europe in Dreni.

1835 – He remarried and settled in Concord. A year later he celebrated the birth of his first child as well as publication of his first book, Nature.

1836 - He gradually drifted from the doctrines of his peers, then formulated and first expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay, Nature.

1842 – He lost his first son, Waldo, to scarlet fever. Emerson wrote about his grief in two major works: the poem "Threnody", and the essay "Experience."

1845 – On his journal records, he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas.

1882 – He died on the 27th day of April this year in Concord, Massachusetts. He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.

• "What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."
• "To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intellingent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded."
• "The definition of success--To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one's self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived--this is to have succeeded."
• "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
• "To be great is to be misunderstood."