Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.
Interpretation
Great achievements often arise from questionable methods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects on the idea that throughout history, many significant accomplishments have not come from honorable or ethical means. This suggests a complex relationship between morality and success, highlighting that the ends can sometimes justify the means, regardless of the questionable nature of the methods employed.
In practice
During a debate about historical leaders, one might use this quote to illustrate how some leaders achieved greatness through unethical actions.
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?
The autobiographical self has prompted extended memory, reasoning, imagination, creativity and language. And out of that came the instruments of culture - religions, justice, trade, the arts, science, technology.
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.
What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts.
There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. That one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.
Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.
Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . .
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