Ralph Waldo Emerson. Self-Reliance. - QUOTATIONS
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.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-Reliance is its aversion.
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. ... It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own, but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
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.
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as the Reformation, of Luther, Quakerism of Fox, Methodism, of Wesley . . .
When private men shall act with vast views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.
Man is timid and apologetic. He is not longer upright. He dares not say ‘I think’, ‘I am’, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to beter ones; they are for what they are; thez exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Insist on yourself; never imitate.
Society never advances. ... For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. . . . The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun.
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, bu 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.
And so the reliance on Property, including the Reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of sel-reliance.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the trimph of principles.
- trust thyself
- immense goodness is not good, e.g. alms to all poor, truth is handsomer than goodness
- don’t limit yourself because you fear to contradict yourself
- great men (Caesar, Christ) put other people into shade, they and the posterity only follow ® history of mankind is the history of a few great men
- don’t look backward into the history, focus on the present moment
- do not pretend any false feelings, be true, speak what you really think
- greater self-reliance – a new respect for the dininity in man ® must work a revolution in religion, education, all spheres of life
- prayer doesn’t beg for anything, it is a contemplation of life from the highest point of view
- it is lack of self-culture the idol of traveling (England, Greece, Egypt), you don’t find more on your travels than you can at home