Selected quotes from Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance.

I decided to read Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance after a trusted mind spoke highly of it to me. As I read, I found myself frequently circling and underlining passages, so I thought it might be instructive to put those lines and passages that I found notable up on my blog.  Here they are, in chronological order:

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.

The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

On my saying “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none.

I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live.

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.

A man must consider what a blindman’s-bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side — the permitted side — not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statemen 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 say 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.

Men imagine that the communicate their virtue or vice only by overt action, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

The force of character is cumulative.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.

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. 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 futre. He canot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy.

All men have my blood, and I have all men’s. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it.

Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people whith whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.  If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.  If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.  I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.  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.

“But so you may give these friends pain.” Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power to save their sensibility.  Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.  We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation.  The gods love him because men hated him.  ”To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.”

NOTE: I was delighted to find Emerson quoting Zoroaster. – Jon

Travelling is a fool’s paradise.  Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.

Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?

Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.  He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle.  he has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.  A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky.

Society is a wave.  The wave moves forward, but the water of which it is composed does not.

A cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of respect for his nature.  Especially he hates what he has, if he sees that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Wow, well I’ve just quoted about 1,800 words from Emerson’s 10,000-word essay.