Self-Reliance and Other Essays (AmazonClassics Edition) Kindle Edition

Give this as a gift to your favorite nonconformist, the person who is unique and walks to their own drummer. It will make it easier for them to breathe in this world.

It is difficult to write a review that is worthy of the greatness of this book. Poetically written, each essay is uniquely beautiful. It astonishes me to read a book from so long ago that is still so relevant today. I wish I could go back and have conversations with Emerson and Thoreau. Imagine the conversations they had with each other! It took me a while to read this, but it was important to me to take my time and understand each point he was making. This is the kind of book that one should reference throughout life. Emerson reminds us to trust in our soul above everything and let its force shine through. Only then will our lives have meaning.

I had this on my wish list for a couple of years, and was really looking forward to it. I have bought many Dover Thrift editions before, but beware. It is completely the luck of the draw. Some are very nice, and usable. Others are like, well, this one. I may try to read it, but also may just consent to find a more user friendly copy. Sorry Dover...love you guys! But this was just disappointing. Dave (in Colorado)

I bought a copy of this book because it is a well known classic.I typically read in bed before sleeping at night.The first day I started reading this book, I realized that it was going to be a very slow read that you have to sit and ponder the meaning of after each sentence the author wrote.I read one paragraph to my wife who was laying beside me in bed. She said "Oh My God.....that sounds painful to read." It was so annoying to me that I laughed out loud.I literally threw the book against the wall from my spot in bed belting out a curse word about how this book ever got so many good ratings. This book sucks.In my opinion, this writing was harder to grasp and understand than much more historic philosophy works that I read back in college. At this point in my life, reading something that is this painful to grasp the meaning of, is not something I care to dedicate my time to. Life is too short.Perhaps I was just too impatient with the book and should have read farther into the first chapter. But alas, I shan't give it a second attempt. FUBAR I say. FUBAR.If you want a summary of what is written in this book, watch or listen to one of the many Youtube videos summarizing it. They are short and to the point.I might use this book as a target when sighting in my shotgun for deer season this year. - Or maybe a blown up picture of Emerson himself. If I do, I will yell hateful things at him or it before I pull the trigger each time. Better yet I could offer it a proper funeral by strapping it to a package of tannerite. Kaboom!

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American philosopher, writer and poet, and former Unitarian minister who led the transcendentalist movement in American in the mid-19th century.(NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 117-page edition.)He wrote in the essay on ‘History,’ “We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience, and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective, in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself…. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.” (Pg. 4) Later, he adds, “Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of God have, from time to time, walked among men and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.” (Pg. 11)In the essay on ‘Self-Reliance,’ he observes, “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… In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty… Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place that divine providence has found for you… Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age.” (Pg. 19)He advises, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is sacred but the integrity of your own min. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world… I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.” (Pg. 21-22)He notes, “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think that they know what is your duty better than you know it. 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 and independence of solitude.” (Pg. 23)He states, “Suppose you should contradict yourself, what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone…. but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day… Leave your theory, as joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do… Pythagoras was misunderstood… and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood” (Pg. 24-25)He comments, “The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things… Whenever a mind is simple, and receives divine wisdom, old things pass away…. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old moldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not.” (Pg. 28)He says, “But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man ,nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other man. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.” (Pg. 30) Later, he adds, “As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” (Pg. 33)He concludes, “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation…. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.” (Pg. 35) He adds, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” (Pg. 38)In the essay on ‘Friendship,’ he wrote, “There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in effect, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud… The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by every sort of tie…. But we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love.” (Pg. 44-45) Later, he adds, “I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.” (Pg. 49)In his essay on ‘The Over-Soul,’ he notes, “Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence… I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine. As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river… I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator… from some alien energy the visions come.” (Pg. 51-52)He observes, “We are wiser than we know. If we will not interfere with out thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us, and casts his dread omniscience through us over things.” (Pg. 57)He states, “The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary… is, that one class speak FROM WITHIN, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class, FROM WITHOUT, as spectators merely… as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons.” (Pg. 60)He says, “Let men, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet and shut the door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men’s devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made his own.” (Pg. 63)In the essay ‘The Poet,’ he comments, “The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor, he knows and tells,; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes.” (Pg. 67-68) Later, he adds, “Art is the path of the creator to his work.” (Pg. 80)In his essay on ‘Experience,’ he notes, “The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are---Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness… But the definition of ‘spiritual’ should be, ‘that which is its own evidence.’” (Pg. 87)In his famous ‘Divinity School Address,’ he says, “See again the perfection of the Law as it applies itself to the affections, and become the law of society. As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell.” (Pg. 105)He suggests, “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man… He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me, god acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages!” (Pg. 107)He continues, “In thus contemplating Jesus, we become very sensible of the first defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion… it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the PERSON of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe…” (Pg. 108) He argues, “Men have come to speak of the revelation as something long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.” (Pg. 109)He observes, “I think no man can go … into one of our churches, without feel that what hold the public worship had on men, is gone or going. It has lost its grasp on the affection of the good, and the fear of the bad. In the country, neighborhoods, half parishes are ‘signing off,’ to use the local term. It is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from the religious meetings.” (Pg. 113)He advises, “Let me admonish you… to go alone; to refuse the good models… and dare to love God without mediator or veil… Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost---cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with the Deity.” (Pg. 114) He concludes, “I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms.” (Pg. 116)These essays are “must reading” for anyone studying Emerson, or Transcendentalism.

I've not been an avid reader most of my life. At 70 years and now retired I'm trying to catch up and have a strong desire to read the classics which have deep insights into life. This was not an easy book for me to read -- I read it slowly and tried to digest each chapter. There were several occasions where I got it! It took some effort I my part and I'm pleased I read it. I look forward to reading others by Emerson..

Binding intact, pages clean, it is what it says it is. Print is small, with a lot of words per page. If you need glasses, make sure to wear them while reading. You may need ‘em!

There is very little good stuff in this book. It's all covered up by babble and more babble that doesn't end. It's very boring. I didn't get as much out of this as I thought I would. If you take the babble out of this book you have three pages. The rest is lost in the babble.

A truly great read, total eye opener. At times, it was like the book knew I was reading it and was telling me what I needed to know...!!

I choose to read this when I'm feeling wide awake and fresh!It was written in the mid 1800's, I find the sentence structure a little convoluted.However, the message is very strong and relevant. Worth sticking with it - in my opinion!

This is a very poorly printed cheaply made book. A complete rip off at an inflated price.

Amazon prints just show the lack of respect to readers printing what it was a book as a pamphlet and reducing types to small print's size on "disclaimers" what no one read nor they aren't print to be read.

good cheap product