Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the nature of grief, emphasizing that much of our suffering comes from anticipating troubles that never actually occur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the human experience of grief, where we may overcome some sorrow but often carry with us the burden of anxiety over potential future misfortunes. It emphasizes that the emotional toll we endure from imagined troubles can sometimes be greater than the grief we experience from real losses, prompting a reflection on the unnecessary weight of our worries about what may never happen.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, one can say: 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely observed, much of our grief comes from the torments of what never came to pass.'
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?
Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.
Life was just a tire swing. 'Jambalaya' was the only song I could sing. Blackberry pickin', eatin' fried chicken, And I never knew a thing about pain. Life was just a tire swing.
anyone who gets up early by inclination or has been forced to rise early out of necessity finds it intolerable that others should go on sleeping soundly
He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
I remember watching the mascara tears flood the ivories and I thought, "It's OK to be sad." I've been trained to love my darkness.
I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
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