We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds... A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes self-reliance and the collective empowerment of individuals within a society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses a vision of a society where individuals take responsibility for their own actions and thoughts, suggesting that true strength and inspiration come from within each person. He highlights the importance of self-trust and the idea that a community thrives when its members believe in their intrinsic value and contribution to the whole.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire young leaders.
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?
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
My dog does not care where heat comes from, but he cares that it comes, and soon. Indeed he considers my ability to make it come as something magical, for when I rise in the coal black pre-dawn and kneel by the hearth to make a fire, he pushes himself blandly between me and the kindling splits I have laid in the ashes, and I must touch a match to them by poking it between his legs. Such faith , I suppose, is the kind that moves mountains.
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
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