The Conduct of Life is a collection of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson published in 1860 and revised in 1876. In this volume, Emerson sets out to answer “the question of the times:” “How shall I live?” It is composed of nine essays, each preceded by a poem. These nine essays are largely based on lectures Emerson held throughout the country, including for a young, mercantile audience in the lyceums of the Midwestern boomtowns of the 1850s.
The Conduct of Life has been named as both one of Emerson's best works and one of his worst. It was one of Emerson's most successful publications and has been identified as a source of influence for a number of writers, including Friedrich Nietzsche.
Read more about The Conduct Of Life: Publication, Intitial Reception, Significance, The Essays, Translations, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words conduct of life, conduct and/or life:
“... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.”
—René Descartes (15961650)
“My belief is that no being and no society composed of human beings ever did, or ever will, come to much unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (182595)
“The writing career is not a romantic one. The writers life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (18761958)