Max Ehrmann

Author of The Desiderata

(1872 - 1945)

"The Desiderata, that world-famous poem that begins, "Go placidly amid the noise and haste", must be one of the best loved poems in the English language, revered by millions as the ideal philosophy of life. Few people realise that it was written, not on a gravestone in an old churchyard, but in 1927, by the Indiana poet Max Ehrmann who died in 1945 and whose work, until the 1960s was largely forgotten.

Max Ehrmann was born in Terre Haute, Indiana and graduated from De Pauw University, going on to do postgraduate studies in law and philosophy at Harvard University. After practicing law for several years he joined the family business, but retired ten years later to concentrate on writing. It was only in the late '60s when Desiderata became a cult poem of the new generation, that his work began to be better known." (Source: "The Desiderata of Happiness" by Max Ehrmann Selected by Susan Polis Schutz)

ENJOY THE WORDS OF
THE DESIDERATA