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?
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.
Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.
To keep the heart then, is carefully to preserve it from sin which disorders it; and maintain that spiritual and gracious frame, which fits it for a life of communion with God.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
Kindness is not a bad religion, no matter what name you use for God.
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