Name:_________________________________ Date:_________________ Pd:__________
“Self-Reliance” Writing Assignment
Choose one of the excerpts from “Self-Reliance” listed below. Then write two paragraphs about
the excerpt. The first paragraph explains the quote and connects it to Transcendental ideals. The
second paragraph explains how the quote is important in your life. This is worth 20 points.
Excerpts from “Self-Reliance”
 “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.”
 “Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that
they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.”
 “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to use with a certain
alienated majesty.”
 “Trust thyself: ever heart vibrates to that iron string.”
 “Who would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”
 “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
 “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.”
 “Your goodness must have some edge to it – else it be none.”
 “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”
 “The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
 “The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force.”
 “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.”
 “Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again,
though it contradicts everything you said today.”
 “Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or
vice emit a breath every moment.”
 “Discontent is the want of self-reliance.”
 “The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.”
 “Insist on yourself; never imitate.”
 “Society never advances. It recedes as fast as one side as it gains on the other.”
 “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
 “Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
 “Fame is proof that people are gullible.”
Brainstorm Sheet
Quote and Explanation
Quote:
Explanation:
Quote:
Explanation:
How it Relates to My Life