“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.”

I think by this Ralph Waldo Emerson means that one must be their own person, they can’t copy others their whole lives. They need to make their own path in life and find out what he himself can do with his mind. One must realize that he will not always have other people around to help him out, but he will always have himself, and he must embrace that.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”

People should not do the same thing everyday. Habits are bad for the mind and soul because after so many days of doing the same thing, you stop thinking about what you have to do. It’s like your brain is on autopilot and your just coasting through life. You can’t live life to its fullest this way. Emerson is telling people that they need to make changes each day to make their lives more exciting. He says statesmen, philosophers and divines love consistency because when people are consistent and in the habit of always doing the same thing it’s easier to control. Emerson also goes on to say that fools use the word misunderstood.

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

By this I think Emerson means that all the geniuses of our world were misunderstood during their lives. I think this is because their ideas were too advanced for the people living during those times to comprehend. Most geniuses are ahead of their time.