Finally reading Self-Reliance

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance

Emerson is someone I often hear quoted and mentioned on podcasts, but how many have truly read him?

I had not.

As you make your way through the classics you begin to realize, they’re classics for two reasons.

One, their themes, envy in this case, are timeless. This is true for novels, essays, or epic poems.

And two, they are typically more readable than you’d first imagine. See tip #6: Read Western canonical literature.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Illustrated Emerson: Essays and Poems. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2018