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?
Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.
Passion mutates into procedures, into rules and roles. Instead of purpose, we focus on policies. Instead of being free to create, we impose constraints that squeeze the life out of us.
How carefully would I atone, if I might, for the time I have lost!
Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
There is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves. And there is nothing which brings us greater joy and happiness than to think, feel, and say what is ours.
The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.
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