The Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841:
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. The power
which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is
which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one
face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another
none. It is not without preestablished harmony, this sculpture in the
memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testily
of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his
confession. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine
idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate
and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his
work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to exhibit anything
divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work
and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no
peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius
deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the
divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the
connexion of events. Great men have always done so, and confided
themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception
that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands,
predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in
the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a
corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and
benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort let
us advance on Chaos and the Dark