Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.
Interpretation
Committing a crime exposes one's vulnerabilities and consequences are visible for all to see.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that when a person engages in criminal behavior, they are metaphorically placed in a situation where their wrongdoings are transparent, akin to being on display. The idea of the earth being made of glass implies that their actions will not go unnoticed, and the repercussions of their crimes will be evident both to themselves and society, reinforcing the interconnectedness of individual actions and public perception.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of crime on society, one might say, 'As Emerson wisely noted, commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.'
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?
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. from "The Lady of the Haunted House
The United Nations stands for the freedom and equality of all peoples, irrespective of race, religion, or ideology.
A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.
βTo think the way you do,β he said smiling, βyou have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope.β βOn both, perhaps.β
A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.
When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realises its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.
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