It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain.

That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.

And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

SELF-RELIANCE

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

I

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul.

The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God.

As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man ceases and God begins.

Man is conscious of a universal soul within his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, Justice, Truth, Love and Freedom, arise and shine.

We live in succession, in divisions, in parts, or particles;

Meantime within is the soul of the whole, the universal beauty, the eternal One.

When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius;

When it breathes through his will, it is virtue;

When it flows through his affection, it is love.

Let man learn the revelation, that the highest dwells with him, that the sources of nature are his own.

II

If a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not.

Is the acorn better than the oak, or the parent than the child?

Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanctity and authority of the soul.

We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts or a few lives.

The soul degrades the past; it turns riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame.

It confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.

Ask not for the great or the remote. See to it only that thyself is here.

God is one and omnipresent; here or nowhere is the whole fact.

III

Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist.

Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution.

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

Let a man take reputation and life in his hands, and dare the gibbet and the mob by the truth of his speech, and rectitude of his behaviour.

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.

Great men have always done so, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart.

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

Abide in the simple and noble regions of thine own life. Trust thyself.

Every heart vibrates to that iron string.

There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the chisel of Phidias or the pen of Dante.

Yourself, a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity and acquaint man at first hand with Deity. O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas!

FRIENDSHIP

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

I

The laws of friendship are great, austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.

Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.

There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either. One is Truth.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.

The other element in friendship is Tenderness.

When a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune.

The essence of friendship is a total magnanimity and trust. Friendship is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death.

It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles;

But also for rough roads and hard fare, ship-wreck, poverty, and persecution.

We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. So that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of

nature.

II

The only way to have a friend is to be (a friend).

In the last analysis, love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men.