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?
I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over.
Isn't it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
We must differentiate between guilt and duty. The soldier on the front, like the common man, who does his duty everywhere, should not be held responsible for the actions of a few who also called themselves Germans.
The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.
Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.
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