I taught Emerson this week, which I always enjoy. This time, it was fun to see my students interact with some of Emerson’s more surprising statements in “Self-Reliance”:

A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him: I wish that he should wish to please me.

Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say, ‘Come out unto us.’–Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; stay at home in thine own heaven.