"There is a time in every man [and women'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. 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. This
sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. The eye was
placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.
We but half express ourselves,
and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be
safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully
imparted, but God [Source] will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A
man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his
best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is a
deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no
muse befriends; no invention, no hope."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Self-Reliance (1841)