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Self-Reliance
Emerson's "Self-Reliance" celebrates originality and nonconformity. He was opposed to people imitating others and famously wrote: There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the...
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Self-Reliance
In his day, Ralph Waldo Emerson was something like a rock star. Crowds came to listen to his lectures. Young people hearkened to his message that American society was on the verge of a new age;...
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Self-Reliance
To understand this line from "Self-Reliance," we have to put it in context. Emerson is urging the reader to listen to his own intuitive insights, and not put them aside because he doubts his...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson complains that mainstream prayer practices are petty and self-serving. He also complains that they presuppose a patron-client relationship with God. People often use prayer as an...
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Reference
I do not believe that self-reliance and self-trust are the same thing. I see self-trust as being more associated with internal feelings, guidance, and perhaps even conscience. Self-reliance...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson believes that society affects what people value because it removes the individual's uniqueness by encouraging conformity. In "Self-Reliance," Emerson argues that society wants people to...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson addresses this tenet in paragraphs 36-37-38, as the first of his challenges to the numbered “offices and relations of men.” He rails against traditional uses of prayer. Individuals...
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Self-Reliance
Much of the main thrust of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" focuses on the importance of staying true to one's inner nature and rejecting societal pressures to conform. It is a radical...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson contends that society is "a joint-stock company" that is in conspiracy against the individual. According to Emerson, society's main purpose is to suppress individuality: Society everywhere...
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Self-Reliance
In order to be a true individual, truly original, one must avoid conformity. Emerson is therefore skeptical of all institutions and traditions. The self-reliant individual does not mindlessly...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson argues that we each have one, God-ordained destiny that is ours alone to grasp and for that reason we should not feel compelled to conform to what society tells us we should do. Thus the...
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Self-Reliance
In “Self-Reliance,” an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, he states, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is...
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Reference
I think you can defend at least two different answers to this question. First, you can reasonably argue that a follower of Emerson's philosophy would experience a particular type of happiness...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson - the transparent eyeball. A history of pantheism and scientific pantheism by Paul Harrison. I am nothing! I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or...
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Self-Reliance
I think that living a life of "self- reliance" as Emerson defines it is entirely possible in contemporary America. Emerson's overriding idea in "Self-Reliance" is for individuals to remain true to...
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Self-Reliance
The full text of “Self-Reliance” does not contain the word “sacred” in the opening paragraphs. Perhaps you are reading an abridged version. The word does appear twice in the 7th paragraph,...
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Self-Reliance
You are probably referring to the following recommendation, which is widely quoted online and attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson adds color to his essay by sprinkling personification throughout it, giving abstract concepts and non-human entities human characteristics. One example would be "lungs of inspiration," as...
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Self-Reliance
What is important about the verses written by the painter is that they were original and unconventional. This first sentence thus helps capture a theme of this essay: that the self-reliant...
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Reference
Both are concepts based on essays written by two Transcendentalists in the 1840s—“Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in 1841; and “Civil Disobedience,” then called...
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Self-Reliance
In lines 12-24, Emerson states that self-reliance starts, as we might imagine, with the individual's decision that he must work hard to develop his talents: "no kernel of nourishing corn can come...
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Self-Reliance
A discourse on individualism, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" extols the creativity of individual thought as well as its importance in society while stressing the need for resistance to...
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Self-Reliance
In his essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson repudiates those who desire acceptance and who want consistency of thought and action. Very much the individualist, Emerson holds the mantra of...
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Self-Reliance
The word, “capitulate,” means to give in or surrender. In this quote from Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson details his disgust for conformity and giving in to society’s values....
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Self-Reliance
Firstly, I think you will find an anecdote much easier if you understand what exactly that is. An anecdote is usually an interesting short story, sometimes humorous, about a person or incident. It...
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Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a transcendentalist meaning that he believed humans were inherently good, and that society and its institutions corrupted this purity. By nonconformity, Emerson meant to...
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Civil Disobedience
In the fourteenth paragraph of his essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther,...
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Self-Reliance
While it is difficult to know truth from recorded history, the study of the lives of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America appears to have been much in line with Emerson's...
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Reference
In order to identify Emerson's main points, it's important to understand the historical context. In the 1800's, the idea of belonging to a young nation was an "identity" associated with a sense of...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson thinks personal isolation can be good from time to time. See what he says in paragraph 29: I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how...
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Self-Reliance
In this passage, Emerson is using language with religious connotations to make the point that everyday people aren't meant to be followers or passive bystanders on the sidelines. Everyone should...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson states specifically that every man comes to realize that envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide. The passage in question reads as follows: There is a time in every man's education when...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson opens this essay by talking about some original ("unconventional") lines he had read by a painter. It is the sentiment, more than the subject of the lines themselves, that leaves an...
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Self-Reliance
*The basic tenets of Transcendentalism are these three: A firm belief that God is present in all aspects of Nature, including every human being (this is the concept of the Over-Soul) A conviction...
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Self-Reliance
By the word, "palms," Emerson is referring to the palm leaf or laurel branch, which in ancient times was used by people to celebrate a victory or occasion for rejoicing. One example of this usage...
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Self-Reliance
Because I don't know what the essay prompt itself is, I can't give you a hard and fast answer on this one. However, I can give you some pointers on thesis writing in general, and some good...
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Self-Reliance
Penance is an act of contrition — doing something to show you acknowledge your wrongdoing and are sorry about it. The act of doing penance is ritualized as a sacrament in the Catholic Church, and...
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Self-Reliance
I listed ten aphorisms from the text of “Self-Reliance" below. Each reflects the theme of the power and importance of being a unique individual. These selections are listed in the order in which...
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Self-Reliance
In this essay, Emerson champions the individual. He encourages each person to listen to his/her inner voice. This essay is very much in opposition to things like conformity. Emerson writes, "Whoso...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson is using a metaphor. He is figuratively speaking of all the bards and sages, that is, all the poets and philosophers, as if they are stars lighting up the entire sky like our Milky Way...
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Self-Reliance
The "ever-blessed One" refers to the unity of our souls with the soul of God. It's what Emerson elsewhere calls the "Over-Soul," God's presence in us and all things. Emerson isn't very clear about...
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Self-Reliance
Although this is an opinion question, I think there are some good arguments that show that today's society is less individualistic and self-reliant than in the past. Our obsession with social...
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Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were Transcendentalists, which already made them nonconformists in the eyes of many New Englanders in the 1840s-1850s. A nonconformist is someone who...
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Walden
In both works, the authors are deeply concerned with and invested in the natural world. They revere nature and it is through their relationship or special connection with it that they express their...
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Literature
Being conventional is the same as being traditional: a conformist. If one conforms to the general mores, ideologies, and thoughts of a particular time and place, one conforms without thinking,...
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Self-Reliance
Emerson declares that if anyone wishes to truly be an individual with integrity, he (she) must be a nonconformist because only a nonconformist thinks and acts for himself (herself); only a...
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The Piece of String
In "Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that society is in conspiracy against individualism; Guy de Maupassant's "The Piece of String" is likewise a social criticism of the petty society of...
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Self-Reliance
In Emerson's first series of Essays, "Intellect" is the eleventh in the most common order. "Self-Reliance" is perhaps the most famous, most quoted essay. The general themes of "Self-Reliance"...
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Self-Reliance
In Paragraph 30, Emerson suggests that there should be a fear of living in accordance to the needs of another. Emerson's warning is to limit the growth of the desire to appease others at the cost...
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Self-Reliance
The simile to which you refer, "words as hard as cannon balls," was written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his famous essay entitled "Self-Reliance." The theme of this writing, as well as most of...
