Self-Reliance: Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Debbie Brewer

Self-Reliance is a highly regarded insightful essay in the first series by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
At age 14, he went to Harvard College, where he studied Greek, Latin and history, taking outside jobs to cover his school expenses. While he was at Harvard, he decided to be known by his middle name, Waldo, henceforth.
In 1829, Emerson was ordained at Boston’s Second Church. However, after the death of his wife in 1832, he began to have doubts about the church, feeling it was an institution that was confined by its traditions, which lead to his resignation.
In 1833, he began travelling in Europe, and continued his poetry and writing.
He eventually settled in Concord, Massachusetts.
During the civil war years, he opposed slavery and gave lectures and wrote influential essays regarding his beliefs, though he was never comfortable with being in the limelight.
Emerson's first series of essays was published in 1841.
He was a champion of individualism, an influential lecturer, an insightful essayist and philosopher and is often referred to as the Sage of Concord and the father of transcendentalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781447590224

Book preview

Self-Reliance: Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Edited by

Debbie Brewer

‘Self-Reliance: Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson’

Copyright © 2023 Debbie Brewer

First published in June 2023 by Lulu.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the editor, not be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

Published by Lulu.com

All names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 9781447590224

First Edition

A picture containing drawing, sketch, art, calligraphy Description automatically generated

Self-Reliance

Essay from the First Series

(1841)

A picture containing human face, portrait, person, clothing Description automatically generated

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803-1882)

Self-Reliance

Ne te quæsiveris extra.

(Do not seek for anything outside of thyself)

"Man is his own star;

and the soul that can

Render an honest

and a perfect man,

Commands all light,

all influence, all fate;

Nothing to him falls

early or too late.

Our acts our angels are,

or good or ill,

Our fatal shadows

that walk by us still."

Power

Cast the bantling on the rocks,

Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;

Wintered with the hawk and fox,

Power and speed be hands and feet

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 instil 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 luster 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, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced