"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. (Emerson, "Self-Reliance")". This quote is very inspiring to me! I think it means that everybody gets to a certain point in life when they figure out they just need to be themselves and who they were meant to be. You just have to take what you got and work with it and this will lead to inner peace and happiness. There is no point envying anyone else because you are not them and you cannot change this no matter what you do ever because you will only ever be yourself. Envy is just a huge waste time, and you could be improving yourself with the energy that you use trying to be somebody else. You have to move on and just embrace who you are inside, or you will forever be unhappy.This quote also means that you should also not try to be anyone else because it is pointless and bad to you inner individual, or "suicide" as Emerson refers to it. By not being yourself you will lose all that was unique to you and not even able to be yourself ever again. This would be an undeniable tragedy to the world because there will never ever be anyone exactly like you ever again. This quote also talks about that you can achieve something truly remarkable if you keep working with yourself and improve on both your talents and faults. If you can do this then you will be successful and reap the rewards of all of the hard work that you had to put in to get there.