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?
I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
While I am in this world, I am resolved that no vexation shall put me out of temper if I can possibly command myself. Even old age, which is making strides towards me, shall not prevail to make me peevish.
If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.
If a thing is old, it is a sign that it was fit to live. Old families, old customs, old styles survive because they are fit to survive. The guarantee of continuity is quality. Submerge the good in a flood of the new, and good will come back to join the good which the new brings with it. Old-fashioned hospitality, old-fashioned politeness, old-fashioned honor in business had qualities of survival. These will come back.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.
Life without knowledge is death in disguise.
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