Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.
Interpretation
Constructive criticism should be positive and helpful rather than negative and destructive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of delivering criticism in a constructive manner. Instead of being harsh or unproductive, criticism should aim to guide and inspire individuals towards growth, much like a gentle south wind that nurtures rather than an east wind that brings harshness.
In practice
In a team meeting when discussing performance feedback.
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?
I have never met a heavy heart that wasnβt a phone booth with a red cape inside Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
Itβs possible, Iβm moving through the hard veins of heavy mountains, like an arc, alone; Iβm so deep inside, I see no end in sight, and no distance: everything is getting near and everything near is turning to stone.
I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.
The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.