Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that material wealth is insignificant compared to love, truth, and moral integrity, which hold sacred value.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson contrasts the triviality of commerce and material pursuits with the profound importance of love, faith, and truthfulness in one's character. He asserts that these deeper human aspirations and virtues are what truly matter and hold sacred significance in our lives, suggesting that one's character and relationships are far more valuable than any commercial success or material gain.
In practice
In a speech about personal values, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of integrity over material success.
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?
There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
But actually time isn't a straight line. It doesn't ave a shape. In all senses of the term, it doesn't have any form. But since we can't picture something without form in our minds, for the sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution.
Chemical weapons simply have no place in the 21st century. Progress in this vital area will help generate momentum to meet our goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. And if it is not, the wounds will fester from generation to generation.
But it was not the roomβs disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.
India believes that the world is a family, and the best means of resolution is shared discourse. A family is shaped by love and is not transactional; a family is nurtured by consideration, not greed; a family believes in harmony not jealousy.
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