Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Quotes from Emersons Self-Reliance

• 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. p. 70
• 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 thought
  they come back to us with a certain alienated
  majesty. p. 70
• Trust thyself every heart vibrates to that iron
  string. p. 71.
• Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the
  manhood of every one of its members. p. 71.
• Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. p.
  71.
• I shun father and mother and wife and brother,
  when my genius calls me. p. 71.
• What I must do is all that concerns me, not what
  the people think. p. 71.

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• Do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your
  work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man
  must consider what a blind-man-bluff is this game
  of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate
  your argument. p. 71. 
• For non-conformity the world whips you with its
  displeasure. p. 71.
• 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.
• To be great is to be misunderstood. p. 72.
• The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a
  hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient
  distance, and it straightens itself to the
  average tendency. p. 72.
• The relations of the soul to the divine spirit
  are so pure that it is profane to seek to
  interpose helps. It must be that when God
  spaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but
  all things should fill the world with his voice
  should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls,
  from the centre of the present thought and new
  date and new create the whole. p. 73

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•  in the universal miracle petty and particular
  miracles disappear. p. 73
• Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer
  upright. He dares not say I think, I am, but
  quotes some saint or sage. p. 73.
• 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 future. He
  cannot be happy and strong until he too lives
  with nature in the present, above time. p. 73.
• Life only avails, not the having lived. Power
  ceases in the instant of repose it resides in
  the moment of transition from a past to a new
  state. p. 73.
• He who has more soul than I, masters me, though
  he should not raise his finger. p. 73.
• I like the silent church before the service
  begins, better than any preaching. p. 74.
• you isolation must not be mechanical, but
  spiritual, that is, must be elevation. p. 74.

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• It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance
  must work a revolution in all the offices and
  relations of men in their religion in their
  education in their pursuits their modes of
  living their association in their property in
  their speculative views. p. 74.
• 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
  theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not
  unity in nature and consciousness. p. 74.
• The soul is no traveler the wise man stays at
  home. p. 75.
• Insist on yourself never imitate. p. 75.
• Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one
  side as it gains on the other. p. 75.
• The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost
  the use of his feet. p. 75.
• Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the
  water of which it is composed does not.
• And so the reliance on Property, including the
  reliance on governments which protect it, is the
  want of self-reliance. p. 75.
• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing
  can bring you peace but the triumph of
  principles. p. 75.

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Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
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Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848) IT
IS MANS DUTY TO WASH HIS HAND OF WRONG. It is
not mans duty, as a matter of course, to devote
himself to the eradication of anywrong he may
still properly have other concern to engage him
but it is his duty at least, to wash his hands of
it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to
give it practically his support. If I devote
myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I
must first see, at least, that I do not pursue
them sitting upon another mans shoulders. I must
get off him fist, that he may pursue his
contemplations too. (p. 51.) DEMOCRACY SOMETIMES
PREVENTS PEOPLE FROM DOING THE RIGHT THING. In a
democracy, there are unjust laws, but people
think that they ought to wait until they have
persuaded the majority to alter them. (p. 52.)
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Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
(1848) ANY MAN MORE RIGHT THAN HIS NEIGHBORS
CONSTITUTES A MAJORITY BECAUSE HE HAS GOD ON HIS
SIDE, AND HE SHOULD ACT IMMEDIATELY TO WASH HIS
HAND OF WRONG. If a government is maintaining
unjust laws, people should at once effectually
withdraw their support, both in person and
property, from the government. They should not
wait till they constitute a majority of one,
before they suffer the right to prevail through
them. I think that it is enough if they have God
on their side, without waiting for that other
one. Moreover, any man more right than his
neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
(p. 52)   ONE HONEST MAN CAN CHANGE THE STATE.
For it matters not how small the beginning may
seem to be what is once well done is done
forever. But we love better to talk about it
that we say is our mission. (p. 52)   Under a
government which imprisons any unjustly, the true
place for a just man is also a prison. Cast your
whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your
whole influence. (p. 52)
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Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848) A
minority is powerless while it conforms to the
majority it is not even a minority then but it
is irresistible when it clogs by its whole
weight. (p. 52)   IT IS GOOD TO BE A MARTYR
RATHER THAN A SINNER. Suppose blood should flow
when standing up to the government or the
majority in refusal to consent to unjust laws.
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the
conscience is wounded? Through this wound a mans
real manhood and immortality flow out, and he
bleeds to an everlasting death. (p. 52)   THE
STATE SHOULD HAVE TRUE RESPECT FOR THE
INDIVIDUAL. The progress from an absolute to a
limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a
democracy, is a progress toward a true respect
for the individual. There will never be a really
free and enlightened State until the State comes
to recognize the individual as a higher and
independent power, from which all its own power
and authority are derived, and treats him
accordingly. I please myself with imaging a State
at least which can afford to be just to all men,
and to treat the individual with respect as a
neighbor which even would not think it
inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to
live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor
embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of
neighbors and fellow-men. (p. 52)