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?
You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. This is not an easy struggle. Indeed, it may be the most difficult task in the world, for opening the door to your own life is, in the end, more difficult than opening the doors to the mysteries of the universe.
Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
Hear the meaning within the word.
I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people when they're sorry for themselves. Self-pity is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the world today.
Ther nis no werkman, whatsoevere he be, That may bothe werke wel and hastily.
I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.
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