Imitation is suicide.
Genuine
Yes. In Essays: First Series (1841), Essay II, “Self-Reliance”.
Found word for word by program in the full text.
The wording people share differs from the text; the words in the text are underlined below.
- Work
- Essays: First Series (Essays), 1841
- Where
- Essay II, “Self-Reliance”
- Found at
- Paragraph 66 of the text
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
[…] Else to-morrow 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.
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.1 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. […]
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. […]
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! […]
The scene
The opening of the essay’s first section. Emerson describes a point every person reaches in their education, when they see that envying others and copying them are both wasted, and that their own plot of ground, however small, is the only one that will feed them. He goes on to say that the power in each person is new in nature and that nobody knows what they can do until they try.
What it means
Copying someone else means giving up the one thing you alone can contribute; you have to accept yourself as you are and work your own ground.
Often misread
Quoted as a ban on learning from others or on influence. The sentence is one of three convictions in a list and concerns taking yourself as your portion; Emerson elsewhere quotes and borrows freely.
Topics
Related quotes
- Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
- To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. (misattributed)
- If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Henry David Thoreau
- That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee. (paraphrase) Marcus Aurelius
- Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. (paraphrase) Aristotle
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