In response to a question about changes in publishing, I surfed the web and came across, by chance these quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. How’s this? There’s a lot that’s good about change. But one thing not to forget, Emerson had down pat:
- The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life – no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than instreets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature – Nature.
- Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the sufferage of the world – Essays, Series I (Self-Reliance)
- 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. To be great is to be misunderstood – Essays, Series I (Self-Reliance)
Quotes compiled, with more, here. You don’t have to go so far as to say to be yourself you have to be misunderstood – that to dig deep into your being you have to not be concerned who reacts how. But it’s something to keep in mind, that if you speak your own mind, you won’t ALWAYS be understood. Some people never will. Some will after a time. Some easily. But that’s not the point. Or is it????
