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?
The heart is like a mirror. When we dust it off, we are able to see ourselves. The dust is all our stuff - guilt, anger - this stuff is reflected back to us. Practice removes the dust from the mirror of our hearts.
Everyone eats and drinks; yet only few appreciate the taste of food.
It is commonly seene by experience, that excellent memories do rather accompany weake judgements.
Every day we're given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us . . . if we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.
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