EMERSON & SARTRE

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better or for worse as is his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Every man is personally responsible for what he is and what he does. When we say that a man is responsible for himself we do not only mean that that he is responsible for his own individuality but that he is responsible for all men.

The power which resides in him is new in nature and none but he knows what it is he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. But God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and filled with joy when he has put his heart into his work and has done his best, but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson & Jean Paul Sartre