Self-Reliance

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.

that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought.

Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.

Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Self-censorship is not just self-betrayal and self-abandonment (which would be bad enough), but soul-betrayal and betrayal of our Muse, out inner voice, our highest self. Hats off to Emerson. He was “American” in the absolute best sense of the word: bold, fresh-thinking, trusting himself and following his own star.

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.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

piquancy

“Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” If you can think for yourself and put those thoughts into meaningful action that improves the state of the world, you’re well on the way to a courageous, remarkable life.

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ephemeral

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but we cannot spend the day in explanation.

There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be;

You are on the razor’s edge, meaning right here, right now, playing for keeps, not for appearances.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live.

I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

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 tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

Greatness appeals to the future.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.

that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet.

The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.

mendicant

sycophantic.

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deference

When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself

any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that

If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.

He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.

He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

There can be no darker nor more devastating tragedy that the death of a man’s faith in himself and in his power to direct his future. Saul Alinsky