Essays, First Series

The obstacle is the way

Echoes

Emerson writes “Our strength grows out of our weakness” and that “every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor”. Faults and attacks become strength, in his own words, and he credits no one.

1. c. 170 to 180 CE

   “for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”

   Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Earliest we can find, about 1,670 years earlier.

2. 1841

   “Our strength grows out of our weakness.”