Self-Reliance Self-Reliance "Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." This essay is an analysis into the nature of the “aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded.” The first hint of the philosophy
Critical and Historical Essays (Macaulay) name. Over the next twenty years he became one of their most regular and most popular reviewers, and his success in this line helped to promote his rise in politics. In 1843 he was persuaded to collect his reviews in book form, and the "Critical and Historical Essays" were duly published by Longman in three volumes. Macaulay restricted the collection to his contributions to the "Edinburgh Review", and left out some of these also, especially those which he thought were of ephemeral interest or which personally attacked former political enemies. "Critical and Historical Essays" was from the first a successful