Quotes from Self-Reliance and Nature

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Build therefore your own world.

Build, therefore, your own world.

To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

Envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

Travelling is a fool's paradise.