Meaning of “Every path but your own is the path…”

The Soul of Man under Socialism; Wilde develops individualism as the freedom to form a life from within rather than conform to social expectation.

Essays, First Series, essay II, “Self-Reliance,” Project Gutenberg #2944. “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” follows Emerson’s claim that society conspires against the manhood of its members through conformity. The represented Gutenberg witness prints a comma after “man,” while the frozen catalog quotation omits that punctuation; the wording is otherwise the same. It remains Transcendentalist moral rhetoric about self-trust and independence rather than a universal instruction to reject social norms or expertise.

Moral printed after “Hercules and the Wagoner” in the Townsend translation; Hercules first tells the driver to help himself.

Song of Myself, in the passage describing the road each person must travel for themselves.

Proverbs 4:23 in the King James Version.

Narrative, Chapter X; the line follows Douglass’s physical resistance to Edward Covey and precedes his resolve never again to be a slave in fact.