And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.
Interpretation
The loss of worship symbolizes a deeper decline in a nation's moral and spiritual values.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the significance of worship and spirituality within a nation. He suggests that losing the capacity or the inclination to worship can lead to profound moral and ethical decay, ultimately endangering the very fabric of society. This loss, he contends, can be more disastrous than any physical calamity, as it signifies a disconnect from fundamental values and principles that unify and uplift people.
In practice
In a speech about community values, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of shared beliefs.
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 this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.
Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.
I suppose you inevitably fall into habits of expression.
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