Every man alone is sincere._x000D_ At the entrance of a second person,_x000D_ hypocrisy begins._x000D_ We parry and fend the approach_x000D_ of our fellow-man by compliments,_x000D_ by gossip, by amusements, by affairs._x000D_ We cover up our thought from him_x000D_ under a hundred folds.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that individuals can be honest in solitude but become insincere when interacting with others due to social pressures.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote explores the concept of sincerity and hypocrisy in human interactions. It highlights how, in isolation, a person can be true to their thoughts and feelings; however, once they engage with others, they often disguise their true selves with compliments, gossip, and distractions. This behavioral shift indicates the complexities of social interactions where maintaining a façade becomes a common defense mechanism against vulnerability.
In practice
In a discussion on human behavior at a psychology seminar.
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?
Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
She supposed that houses, after all - like the lives that were lived in them - were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, which counted, rather than the bricks.
A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?
When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.
When we say 'Black Lives Matter,' we're not saying that any other life doesn't matter. That has never, ever been our message. Our message has always been from a place of love.
Any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.
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