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 for worse as
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. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and
none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he
know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character,
one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This
sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony.
The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might
testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves,
and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues,
so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work
made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has
put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has
said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a
deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius
deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept
the place the divine providence has found for you, the society
of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men
have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the
genius of their age, betraying their perception that the
absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working
through their hands, predominating in all their being. And