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does anyone know what this is saying?
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 bettr, for worse, as his portion: that through the wide universe is full of good, no kernal of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
well, first see the repetition in the structure of the first two lines, then go along what it reminds you of: envy-ignorance, imitation-suicide, taking himself better-worse
Emerson, a romantic, is probably motioning to the "know thyself" philosophy, and he's also talking about just earnings, how they should be acquired..
Emerson was all about self-reliance; the glimmer of the divine within each of us,etc. Trust your own instincts. Or
as Emerson's contemporary, James Fenimore Cooper often wrote: "Follow one's own 'lights.' " It also could be perhaps a re-stating of Polonious speech in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true." (But in Shakespeare's play Polonius's speech is supposed to beconsidered as full of platitudes, and Emerson was nothing if not earnest.
And sincere.
- being jealous is a complete waste of timeQuote:
Originally Posted by loyt
- pretending to be someone else is a complete waste of a life
- you must accept who you are and not lie to yourself
- it is up to him to succeed at life - he is in control - his decisions control the variables of the future, making the random future more constant, more predictable
There isn't one definition to what Emerson says.
"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."
"The theory of books is noble....the scholar of the first age recieved into him the world around; brooded theron; gave it the new arrnagement of his own mind; and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth...It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires."
"The great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should be a moral one; to teach self-trust: to inspire the youthful man with an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that there is all his strength, and to inflame him with a piety towards the Grand Mind in which he lives."
in-summary, inspiration should be seen as the objective of every work and piece of art. your goal as an artist should be to inspire, not copy or regurgitate.