Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance

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In the essay “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, he writes “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.” This means that everyone eventually matures because they realize that being jealous is pointless in the grand scheme of things. Imitating others is “suicide” because we “kill” our true selves when we try to be someone else. He is persuading the reader to feel confident in their own skin. Additionally, he gives hope by saying that one day everyone will get to a point in their lives where they will reach an age that they realize that resentment and anger isn’t worthwhile. I agree with Emerson’s theory. I hope that by now I have reached that age where
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