RALPH WALDO EMERSON on Judgment

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. -Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson was an American poet, essayist, and philosopher who believed that nature is a manifestation of the spirit.

He once remarked that the tree or the brook has no duplicity, nor pretentiousness.

They’re simply unique entities of the same impression of life.

Emerson writes, “All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle’s, and of a rabbit, rabbit’s. But a man on the other hand, is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will.

Respectively, his genius leads him one way, and his trade or politics in another.”

“Good judgment” observed Emerson, “comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”

The Roman stoic philosopher, Epictetus would remind us that “It isn’t events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them.”

Often, we say to ourselves. “How could this have happened?”