Self-Reliance and Other Essays with Original Illustrations

This edition presents essays by prominent American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). In addition to the famous essay, “Self-Reliance,” other works from Essays, First Series (1841) and Essays, Second Series (1844) are included:

“The American Scholar,” “Compensation,” “Friendship,” “Heroism,” “Manners,” “Gifts,” “Nature,” “Shakespeare, or the Poet,” “Prudence” and “Circles.”

Emerson was a founder of the philosophical and literary movement of transcendentalism and one of the most famous thinkers in the history of the United States. He was a friend and mentor of the famous American naturalist, poet and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1962).

Main ideas that were developed by Emerson in his work and reflected in these philosophical essays relate to social equality and the equality of people in front of God, a search for spiritual perfection, closeness to nature, and purification from vulgar/materialistic interests.

“A great man is always willing to be little.”

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

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson’s Essays

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