Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten; bring them hand to hand, and they are feeble folk.
Interpretation
People often appear bold and threatening from a distance, but up close, they can be quite weak and timid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the nature of human behavior, suggesting that individuals who seem powerful and aggressive when separated by distance often lose their bravado when confronted directly. This highlights the disparity between perceived strength and true character, revealing that many who posture boldly may lack substance and courage when faced with real interactions.
In practice
In a motivational speech discussing the true nature of courage.
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?
Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone.
One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it - that is the only way to know it.
People live their lives, constantly surrounded by anxiety. if they live long before dying, they end up in senility, worn out by concerns: a terrible fate! The body is treated in a very harsh fashion. Courageous men are seen by everyone under Heaven as worthy, but this doesn't preserve them from death. I am not sure I know whether this is sensible or not.
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.
When man does not have firm, calm lines on the horizon of his life- mountain and forest lines, as it were- then a man's innermost will becomes agitated, preoccupied, and wistful.
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