Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance

2011 by Do You Zoom, Inc.

The Domino Project

Published by Do You Zoom, Inc.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 18031882

Self-Reliance / Ralph Waldo Emerson

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-936719-10-5

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. 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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. 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.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

One of the most insidious forms that Resistance takes in the world of a writer is this: well think a thought and then dismiss it as too crazy, too extreme, too apart-from-the-norm or the expected. So we dont write it, we dont say it, we dont even think it. Then a week later well hear someone else articulate that very thought and, in his voice, it will ring so true that we cant help but feel shame that we disowned it. 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. What a guy!

Steve Pressfield

There is a time in every mans 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; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 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. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. 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. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

There is a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide

I remember in exacting detail the precise moment when I reached this point in my education (its coincidental that it actually took place in a classroom). After that moment I became a completely different person, confident in myself and my actions, more willing to accept the downs as well as the ups that I encountered throughout the day, and far more certain that the thoughts I was thinking were important. That teacher at the front of the room knows a lot of things, I thought, but he doesnt know what I know, and thats my value.

Colin Wright

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, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

If you think you can do it, or you think you cant do it, you are right.