Life & Wisdom Quote by Ralph W. Trine

Trine is selling selfhood as an engine, not a mood. In a single breath he turns “individualities” into a kind of personal capital that can be squandered, outsourced, or invested. The phrase “handing over” is doing the heavy lifting: it suggests consent, a quiet transaction where people trade originality for approval, safety, or belonging. That’s the subtext that keeps the line from being mere uplift. The enemy isn’t fate; it’s the small, daily surrender to other people’s expectations.

The rhetorical pivot is classic self-help sermoncraft: diagnosis, then a dare. “Living far below their possibilities” flatters the reader with hidden greatness, then indicts them for giving it away. Trine’s question - “Do you want to be a power in the world?” - isn’t really a question. It frames authenticity as efficacy: being yourself is not just morally pure, it’s strategically potent. That promise of “power” is telling for the era. Writing in the early 20th-century New Thought milieu, Trine aimed at an audience buffeted by industrial modernity, mass culture, and social mobility - conditions that made conformity feel both necessary and suffocating. Individuality becomes a spiritual discipline and a competitive advantage at once.

Even the clunky typo (“I” for “in”) accidentally underscores his urgency: the sentence rushes. Trine isn’t asking for quirky self-expression; he’s urging a refusal to be socially authored. In his worldview, the self is the one resource you can’t afford to delegate.