Yanis Markin

21 best ideas in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on Self Reliance (via justin murphy)

1. Most people do not trust their own beliefs. The essence of genius is simply to trust yourself—to infer that whatever seems most true in your heart is most true in reality—and for everybody else, too, despite whatever they may claim.

2. There is hardly anything more painful

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INTERVIEWER:
Do you find emotional stability is necessary in order to write? Or can you get to work whatever your state of mind? Is your mood reflected in what you write? How do you describe that perfect state in which you can write from early morning into the afternoon?

OATES:
One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing

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everything was in balance and then something changed. it’s heartbreaking isn’t it? the trees are dying. is it some sort of decease? no. it’s the dust disappearing. it’s just flooding out of the world. thought, imagination, feeling, all blowing away. this beautiful place where the people are kinder and wiser than us by far and it’s just dying. what ... See more