We cannot let our angels go; we do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the presence of both good and bad experiences in life, suggesting that the loss of one often makes room for the other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the idea that we might resist letting go of certain elements in our lives, represented by 'angels.' However, he points out that the departure of these familiar comforts or joys allows for growth and the arrival of greater, transformative experiences, symbolized by 'archangels.' It speaks to the natural ebb and flow of life, where endings can lead to new beginnings.
In practice
In a motivational speech, to encourage an audience to embrace change.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
As you become multi-sensory, you begin to see yourself as a soul first and a personality second. You begin to experience yourself as more than a body and more than a mind. and the circumstances around you as meaningful and designed for your spiritual growth.
Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you.
Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.
I would like to believe this is a story Iβm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If itβs a story Iβm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
When one of my Japanese teacups is broken, I imagine that the real cause was not the careless hand of a maid but the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the curves of that porcelain. Their grim decision to commit suicide doesn't shock me: they used the maid as one of us might use a gun.
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, judges and generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.
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