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Self-Reliance quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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, Self-Reliance
“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.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Insist on yourself; never imitate.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“My life 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
“To be great is to be misunderstood.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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
“Your goodness must have some edge to it, —else it is none.” 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, Self-Reliance
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” 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;” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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
“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“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 him no peace.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; —the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

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virtue self genius individualism mind society foolishness truth honesty peace travel exception independence self-assurance loneliness greatness belief life impotence time

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Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes