A fly is as untamable as a hyena.
Interpretation
Both a fly and a hyena symbolize creatures that cannot be easily controlled or domesticated.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that certain aspects of life, much like nature itself, are inherently wild and unmanageable. Just as a fly flits about freely and a hyena exhibits its unpredictable and instinctual behaviors, there are elements of existence that resist human attempts at control, reflecting the importance of recognizing and accepting the untamed aspects of the world.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and accepting life's unpredictability.
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?
Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.
From the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.
Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.
We should be rigorous in judging ourselves and gracious in judging others.
If our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a women is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.
Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.
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