Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance (1841)

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In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt it, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. 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. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. 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, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.… Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough today to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education oftenlabors to silence and obstruct.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen but society has chosen for us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine pains are for curiosity, and not for life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

Ralph Waldo Emerson