In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes creativity in conversation by using familiar language to express new ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the art of communication, where one can convey fresh thoughts and insights through the use of conventional words. This illustrates how innovation does not necessarily require new vocabulary; rather, it underscores the importance of perspective and originality in expression, suggesting that true engagement comes from the ability to reinterpret familiar concepts in ways that resonate uniquely with the audience.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a public speaking event to inspire creativity in discourse.
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?
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Once the command of the air is obtained by one of the contending armies, the war becomes a conflict between a seeing host and one that is blind.
I don't care whether animals are capable of thinking; all I care about is that they are capable of suffering!
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
If ye despise the human race, and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong.
And yet," said Poirot, "suppose an accident-" "Ah, no, my friend-" "From your point of view it would be regrettable, I agree. But nevertheless let us just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together - by death.
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