Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
(175) "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."
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty
(176) "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
(177) "The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature."
(179) "A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he."
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love
Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none
(181) "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."
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
(182) "For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure."
The sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
To be great is to be misunderstood
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks
"We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment."
The force of character is cumulative
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
Honor is always ancient virtue…it is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office
A true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature
He measures you and all men and all events
Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation
The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances indifferent
Every true man is a cause, a country, an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design
Posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients
All history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons
The man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculpture or marble god, feels poor when he looks on these
"Sot" who wakes up one day as the Prince - story is popular because it symbolizes the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince
When private me shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust
We denote this primary wisdom as intuition…in that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin
Here is the fountain of action and of thought
When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams
If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind -- although it may chance that no one has seen it before me
For my perception of it is as a fact as the sun
The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul
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; there is no time to them
It is perfect in every moment of its existence
But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eyes laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on top-toe to foresee the future
He cannot be happy and strong until he to lives with nature in the present, above time
If we live truly, we shall see truly
The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right
Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; long intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account
Life only avails, not the having lived
This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past
We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not
"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."
"Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact."
Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within
Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches
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
But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation
**The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity**
No man can come near me but through my act
What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of that love
I must be myself…I will not hide my tastes and aversions…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
I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly
It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lives, to live in truth
The law of consciousness abides
You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way
And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster
High be his heart, faithful his well, clear his sight, that he may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force and do lean and beg day and night continually
We shun the rugged battles of fate, where strength is born
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls
He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone life, but lives already
He has not one chance, but a hundred chances
[195 - incredible quote]
****He will then see prayer in all action.**** [Good AND Bad]
His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; Our valors are our best gods
Another sort of false prayers are our regrets
Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man
For him all doors are flung wide
Our loves goes out to him and embraces him because he does not need it
Every new mind is a new classification
[On studying a master's mind] In all unbalanced minds the classification is idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means
Travelling is a fool's paradise
My giant goes with me wherever I go
The rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action
The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness
Insist on yourself; never imitate
That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him
No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it
Every great man is a unique
Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again
All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other
For every thing that is given, something is taken
The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not
The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge; its unity is only phenomenal
The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience dies with them
Men measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is
That which a man is….is living property…it perpetually renews itself wherever the man breaths
It is only as a man puts off all foreign support and stands alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail
Man standing on his feet is stronger than a man standing on his head
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles