The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.
Interpretation
Seriousness is often a sign of greatness, as the truly great individuals do not trivialize life.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that individuals of great stature or talent do not waste their time with trivial matters. Instead, they rise above petty concerns and maintain a perspective of seriousness about life. The great understand the importance of meaningful engagement rather than getting bogged down by the mundane or less significant aspects of existence.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of focusing on serious goals.
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?
For the young people here: practicality is a good thing. There are times where compromise is necessary. That's part of wisdom. But it's also important to hang on to what you believe.
In the sea there are countless treasures, _x000D_ _x000D_ But if you desire safety, it is on the shore.
God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.
Whatever final judgment awaits 'Bush v. Gore' in the annals of history, I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair.
Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.
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