A dear friend of mine,
Rose, bought me a book two years ago. She said I’d love it. Sadly I put it on my
desk where it got cover up by dust, old bank statements, and expired coupons.
It wasn’t until I moved this month that I found it once again and finally got
to appreciate it. I’ll tell you what,
Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, does not belong on a desk collecting
dust! It was inspiring and challenging and Rose was right, I loved it! It is
all about nonconformity and listening to your inner voice. I recommend it to
anyone who enjoys a philosophical challenge! I was hard to narrow it down but here are some of my favorite
quotes...
“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; 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.”
“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.”
“'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.”
“These
roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they
are for what they are; they 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.”
“I
like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a
precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit.”
“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.”
