"A Certain Alienated Majesty"

Did you know that Ralph Waldo Emerson was the first person to make the case for blogging. OK, not in so many words. But he did want you to trust your instincts about what you have to say and think you can offer to the world. This classic passage from "Self-Reliance" explains why.

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."