Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on societal values and the allure of superficiality over profound virtues.
In this quote, Emerson contrasts the magnetic appeal of gypsies, who embody freedom and allure, with the apostles, who represent moral integrity and spiritual depth. It prompts the reader to consider the societal inclination towards superficial attractiveness and the underlying implications of such preferences in a moral and philosophical context.
In practice
In a discussion about societal trends and moral values, one could use this quote to highlight the allure of superficial beauty over deeper virtue.
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?
Blame is just a lazy person's way of making sense of chaos.
While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God.
Fishing, Danny boy, is purely a state of mind. Some men, when they are fishing, are after fish. Me, I'm after things you could never set a barbed hook in.
Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.
Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.
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