For 10 points, name this American author of "The Poet" and "Self-Reliance."
In one essay, this thinker described an unscrupulous but powerful class of men full of "coarse energy" he called the "bruisers." At the end of another essay, he imagined an ideal artist who could "walk the world over" and be unable "to find a condition inopportune or ignoble." This thinker described the gift of "a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold" in an essay instructing the reader to "speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again." That essay by this thinker proposes that "to be great is to be misunderstood" and argues, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." For 10 points, name this American author of "The Poet" and "Self-Reliance."
In one essay, this thinker described an unscrupulous but powerful class of men full of "coarse energy" he called the "bruisers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson