"Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man - space, the air, the river, and the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, and a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson is one of the most influential thinkers in American history. His Transcendentalism preached a close communion with man and nature and is one of the great life affirming philosophies of any age. Society and Solitude provides a salient exemplification of Emerson's thought. As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized "the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions."
More than any writer of his time, he forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and embodied and defined what it meant to be an American. Matthew Arnold called Emerson's essays "the most important work done in prose." "I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil." --Walt Whitman
