Civilization depends on morality.
Interpretation
Morality is the foundation upon which society is built.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the crucial role of morality in establishing and maintaining civilization. He suggests that without a moral framework, societal structures cannot flourish, highlighting the importance of ethical principles in guiding human behavior and interactions.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of moral education in schools.
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?
My only regret about money is that I don't have more to give away.
In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.
Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.
We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.
I've come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.
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