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?
To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness.
The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.
Beauty is self-defined, perceived and understood without ambiguity. It's the stuff that lies under the skins of our individual existences.
The true penance comes when God takes away the soul's health and strength for doing penance. Even though I have mentioned elsewhere the great pain this lack causes, the pain is much more intense here. All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.
What to the Slave is the 4th of July.
Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce.
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