Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
Interpretation
Good breeding combines kindness and the ability to be independent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the importance of good breeding as a virtue that encompasses both kindness towards others and the independence of thought and action. This union suggests that true refinement comes not just from social etiquette, but from a deeper moral character and self-reliance, promoting respectful and compassionate interactions while also valuing autonomy.
In practice
In a speech about personal development, one might say: 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence,' which reminds us to cultivate both our compassion and our self-reliance.'
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?
It is awfully hard work doing nothing.
I know when to say no and when to say yes. I take responsibility for my choices. The victim? She went somewhere else. The only one who can truly victimize me is myself, and 99 percent of the time I choose to do that no more. But I need to continue to remember the key principles: boundaries, letting go, forgiveness after feeling my feelings—not before, self-expression, loving others but loving myself, too.
I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.
None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.
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