Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
Interpretation
Cherish and utilize your free time wisely, as it holds great potential.
This quote emphasizes the importance of how we choose to spend our spare moments. Ralph Waldo Emerson compares spare time to uncut diamonds that, if neglected, remain worthless. However, if we invest time in meaningful activities, those moments can transform into valuable experiences that enhance our lives.
In practice
During a motivational speech about time management, this quote highlights the importance of seizing every moment.
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?
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.
There is no joy for the one who does not bear sadness, there is no sweetness for the one who does not have patience, there is no delight for the one who does not suffer, and there is no relaxation for the one who does not endure fatigue.
If these town gods can't detect the thieves who steal from their own temples, it's hardly likely they'll tell me who stole my spade.
Folly consists not in committing Folly, but in being incapable of concealing it. All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public. Reputation depends more on what is hidden than on what is seen. If you canβt be good, be careful.
Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough.
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