Representative men
seven lectures
by Ralph Waldo Emerson · first published 1800
33% recommend67% neutral
An excellent book about some of the world's greatest men, including Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakspeare, Napoleon and Goethe.Please Note: This book is easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.
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…extremely readable, gossipy even, and touch on that subject. Marvel at how little's changed. If I had to name one book, I guess Emerson's Essays: First and Second Series, (that first copy I had also included Representative Men) which I discovered when I was about 20, and read from almost every day for at least 10 years, and still never go more than a few days without....well, it's more myself than I am (to paraphrase Emerson,…
on “Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?” ↗…on particular favourite books/writers are Robert Louis Stevenson's essay Books Which Have Influenced Me[0] and Colin Wilson's book The Books In My Life. Also Chesterton's Twelve Types[1] and Emerson's Representative Men. [0] https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stevenson/robert_louis/s848... [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12491/12491-h/12491-h.htm
on “Ask HN: How to be in peace with all the wrong in the world?” ↗…thousand things I'd experienced but I'd thought were impossible to describe. It was written to inspire people, and inspired me daily for many years—nay, eternally! It—and Emerson's other writings, e.g. Representative Men, Conduct of Life, Nature, Addresses and Lectures etc—gave all the drops of my blood eyes that look upwards.
on “Ask HN: What is the best book you have read with the greatest impact on you?” ↗…problem. It just seemed natural. (Dewey doesn't have the most exciting prose style, but what he says more than compensates for that.) Emerson - Essays (My first book had Essays, first and second series, Representative Men, and some other stuff) It was hugely inspiring every day for many years, from when I was about 20. He writes precisely to be inspiring. He teaches you to be yourself. But also at first it was as though…
on “Ask HN: Which book/essay changed your life?” ↗…solutions for problems no-one else even realized was a problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? – Emerson, Representative Men (That seems related to Emerson's remark that though he didn't have a musical ear, he had musical eyes. I like that.)
on “Cherry-Picking and the Scientific Method (2013) [pdf]” ↗…an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6312/6312-h/6312-h.htm) It seems to me that no person is in a position to judge whether another has found the thing that they should be shaping their life around. As…
on “Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?” ↗Representative Men by Emerson?
on “People obsessed with celebrities tend to score lower on cognitive ability” ↗