What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Interpretation
Inner strength and character are more important than past experiences or future possibilities.
This quote emphasizes the significance of our inner qualities over external circumstances. It suggests that the value of who we are internally far surpasses the weight of our past experiences or what may come in the future. Emerson encourages us to look within and recognize our inner strengths as the true measure of our worth and potential.
In practice
During a motivational speech to inspire resilience in students.
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?
Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.
The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are the necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?'
Mix a little mystery with everything, for mystery arouses veneration.
Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.