“To preserve my soul, I wrote late into the night hours.” — Max Ehrmann | V2Melody

“To preserve my soul, I wrote late into the night hours.”

Night work framed as spiritual self-preservation · As commonly cited from his papers and later collections

About Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann

26 September 1872–9 September 1945

Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work…

More by Max Ehrmann

Poems by Max Ehrmann

More remarks by Max Ehrmann

“If, in an hour of noble elation, I could write a bit of glorified prose that would soften the stern ways of life, and bring to our fevered days some courage, dignity and poise—I should be well-content.”

States his modest hope for what writing might do for ordinary lives · Journal, 1922

“At DePauw I contracted a disease which I have never shaken off. The disease was idealism. Because of it I did the thing in life I wanted to do—Writing.”

A wry confession that idealism, not practicality, set the course of his vocation · Journal / reminiscence of college years

“I am not making a book that will live or a book that will die. I have no thought whether it will live or die. I am for my own sake manifesting myself, looking at myself, encouraging and criticising myself.”

Writing treated as self-examination rather than a bid for immortality · Prelude to Confessional, The Poems of Max Ehrmann