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The Essay On
Self-Reliance

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Done into a printed book by The
Roycrofters at their Shops which
are in East Aurora, New York

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Copyright

1908

By The Roycrofters

Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with a she-wolf's teat: Wintered with the hawk and fox,

Power and speed be hands and feet.

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Self-Reliance

READ the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional Always the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, that is genius.

Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

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