- Society and Solitude
- Love
- Friendship
âWe have known many fine geniuses with that imperfection that they cannot do anything useful, not so much as write one clean sentence: 'T is worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. At a distance, he is admired; but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple. One protects himself by solitude, and one by courtesy, and one by an acid, worldly manner,âeach concealing how he can the thinness of his skin and his incapacity for strict association. But there is no remedy that can reach the heart of the disease, but either habits of self-reliance that should go in practice to making the man independent of the human race, or else a religion of love. Now he hardly seems entitled to marry; for how can he protect a woman, who cannot protect himself?...â
Philosophe amÃĐricain, Ralph Waldo Emerson est nÃĐ Ã Boston le 25 mai 1803, mort à Concord le 27 avril 1882. Il est considÃĐrÃĐ comme l'un des pÃĻres du Transcendantalisme, mouvement philosophique et littÃĐraire qu'il a fondÃĐ avec Henry David Thoreau.