A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirit, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance, Essays , First Series
This passage is from one of the most often cited Emerson essays. Every time I read it, a barely registered sentence leaps up to me. It is at the end of the essay, and usually by that time, I think I have considered all there was to consider. But then a particular event - in this case, being always on the look-out for signs in the form of a new client or two - I recognized here my folly's trap.
These events are not harbingers of future success - each is its own success, and stands singly. They are not fortune-tellers.
Whatever the future holds relies on me.
