Experience (Emerson)

"Experience" is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was published in the collection Essays: Second Series in 1844. The essay is preceded by a poem of the same title.

In one passage, Emerson speaks out against the effort to over-intellectualize life - and particularly against experiments to create utopias, or ideal communities. A wise and happy life, Emerson believes, requires a different attitude. The mention of "Education Farm" is a reference to Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded by former Unitarian minister George Ripley and his wife Sophia Ripley.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speeches
  • The American Scholar (1837)
  • Divinity School Address (1838)
Poetry
  • "Concord Hymn" (1836)
  • "Uriel" (1846)
  • "The Rhodora" (1847)
  • "Brahma" (1856)
Essays
  • Nature (1836)
  • Self-Reliance (1841)
  • Compensation (1841)
  • Over-soul (1841)
  • Circles (1841)
  • The Poet (1844)
  • Experience (1844)
  • Politics (1844)
  • New England Reformers (1844)
Essay collections
  • Essays: First Series (1841)
  • Essays: Second Series (1844)
  • Representative Men (1850)
  • The Conduct of Life (1860)
Related articles
  • The Atlantic
  • Letter to Martin Van Buren
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson House
  • The Old Manse
  • Transcendentalism
  • Transcendental Club
People
  • Amos Bronson Alcott
  • Thomas Carlyle
  • Edward Waldo Emerson
  • Mary Moody Emerson
  • Rev. William Emerson
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • James Russell Lowell
  • Henry David Thoreau


Famous quotes containing the word experience:

    “We now come to the grand law of the system in which we are placed, as it has been developed by the experience of our race, and that, in one word, is SACRIFICE!”
    —Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)