Self-Reliance Quotes

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Envy is ignorance,
Imitation is Suicide.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson on Self Reliance

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide...”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Let us advance on Chaos and the Dark”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Vast spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I think and feel, underlay that former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and will always circumstance, and what is called life, and what is called death.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting identical that I fled from.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“To be great is to be misunderstood...”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance