Self-Reliance and Other Essays Quotes

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”

“Evil is ignorance.”

“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.”

“Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.”

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

“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.”

“What must I do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“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 can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

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

“They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”