Self-Reliance

The piece of writing from Self-Reliance talks a lot about how you should trust yourself. I found it very interesting because of how it says not to just go with everyone else thinks but to really express entirely your own emotions. This quote stuck out to me a lot. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world…” I like how it says that the only thing that anyone has sacred is their own honesty and principles and I completely agree. I believe that if you don’t have your moral principles and stand up for them, then you really don’t have anything. To different people it might mean different things. To me, the quote says that you should only have to respond to yourself and that when you achieve this, you will have the respect of the world.

This is a good example of Transcendentalism for one main reason: it promotes individualism. This quote in particular talks about how people only half express themselves. “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” To me it means that people are ashamed to be individuals and express their true feelings and that we only express ourselves half way and never completely. Transcendentalists believed that each individual mind was a powerful instrument. I think that when Emerson made the point of people only half expressing themselves proved that point.