I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.
Interpretation
Emerson highlights the steadfastness and resilience of the Englishman, drawing a parallel between people and horses.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the strength of character that he perceives in Englishmen, suggesting that they possess an inherent quality of determination and endurance, akin to the attributes they appreciate in horses. By comparing men to horses, Emerson points out that both have qualities, such as 'mettle' (courage) and 'bottom' (stamina), which are valuable and essential for facing challenges in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech on overcoming challenges, one might quote Emerson to emphasize the importance of resilience.
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?
When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.
These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.
If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.
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