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?
Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.
..children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.
The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.
Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external.
In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense.
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