Guard your own spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds.
Interpretation
Cherish and make the most of your free time, as it holds great value.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the importance of recognizing the value of our spare moments, suggesting that they are precious and can lead to growth and personal fulfillment when utilized wisely. Just as uncut diamonds have potential that is not immediately apparent, so too do our moments of free time possess the opportunity for creativity, reflection, and self-improvement.
In practice
In a motivational speech about productivity, one could emphasize the importance of guarding spare moments.
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 few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
You cannot be all things to all people. Be unique. Be different. Give to others what you want yourself. And do what you were made to do.
I don't like to appoint myself to nothing, knowing I'm no better than anybody else. But it always makes me feel good to know I try to do the best I can, and those who might observe say, 'Hey, I can take a little something from that person.'
A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me, along with the growth of vegetation from the earth and of hair from the head, is the growth of understanding.
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