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Unfamiliar States

Emerson's Essays

I kept reading and stopping, reading and stopping, the words detonating inside me. The prose was all roundhouse, fists flying in every phrase:

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”

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

“I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age;”

Finally I came to the end and read:

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

I closed the book, and set it on the bedtable.

Past roads were closed off.

No clear route lay ahead.

But in Ralph Waldo Emerson, I knew I had a found a guide into unfamiliar states.

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