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Self-Reliance

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Top 10 Best Quotes

“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. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. 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. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. 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 great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”

“My life is not an apology, but a life. It 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.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards”

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Book Keywords:

speaking-your-mind, honesty, inspirational, little-minds, conformity, do-what-thou-wilt, philosophers, self-reliance, integrity, consistency, foolish, mind, misunderstood, fearlessness, individualism, mindfulness, greatness, independence, self-trust, solitude

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