It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Interpretation
True greatness lies in maintaining one’s individuality amidst societal pressures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the challenge of preserving one's independence of thought and spirit while being surrounded by societal norms and expectations. Living according to the opinions of others may be straightforward, and solitude allows for personal truth, but true greatness emerges when one can balance these forces and remain true to oneself even in the company of many. It celebrates the strength required to uphold one's individuality and values in the face of external pressures.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech aimed at young leaders about staying true to their values.
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?
Now let us find solace in the finished work of our Lord Jesus. Everything is fully done: justice demands no more.
Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized.
We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.
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