The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members
Interpretation
True civility and equality cannot exist if any group is treated unfairly or degraded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity in this quote, suggesting that the dignity and civility of any race are diminished when another race is mistreated. He advocates for the idea that all individuals are part of a single human community, where the harm done to one affects the entire collective, reflecting a fundamental principle that highlights the importance of empathy and solidarity among different races and groups.
In practice
In a discussion about racial equality, this quote can emphasize the importance of solidarity among all races.
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?
Calmness is the criterion of spiritual progress. Plunge the purified mind into the Heart. Then the work is over.
In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
Either things happen for a reason, or they happen for no reason at all. Either one's life is a thread in a glorious tapestry or humanity is just a hopelessly tangled knot.
I think the narrative of people being caught between two cultures as immigrants is very harmful. It's exclusionary. It essentially tries to argue that some Americans are more real than others.
Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.
Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive, having no opposite--there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. It is living void, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all beings.
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