Quote
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
- Source
- Self-Reliance, in Essays, 1841 · Self-Reliance, p. 38
- Read at
- Internet Archive (University of California Libraries scan of the James Munroe edition)
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About this quote
From the essay "Self-Reliance" in Essays, the first series (Boston: James Munroe and Co., 1841). This is the text of the 1841 first edition.