Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Advice For the Sufi Manager..

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.

Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is unique. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.

Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.

Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature.

Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shall reproduce the Fore world again.

On – Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841

Editor’s Note: Would you like to add something to this post? Do you know any other Emerson quotes which could be helpful to the Sufi Manager? Please discuss in the comments section..