Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that one must choose between seeking truth and remaining in a state of comfort or ignorance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests that all individuals face a pivotal decision: to pursue the often challenging and uncomfortable path of truth or to cling to the comforting but ultimately deceptive state of repose. This dichotomy highlights the inherent struggle between the desire for knowledge and the tendency to avoid discomfort, asserting that one cannot simultaneously embrace both options. In essence, true growth and understanding require sacrifices and a willingness to confront reality, no matter how unsettling it may be.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one could quote this to inspire people to face uncomfortable truths.
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?
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.
We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.
If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today.
If you give a good thing to the world, then over time your karma will be good, and you'll receive good.
Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.
If you find yourself in some difficulty, step aside, and allow Buddha to take your place. The Buddha is in you.
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