The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart.
Interpretation
A light-hearted approach leads to better overall health and longevity.
This quote suggests that the human body functions best when it is not burdened by stress or negativity. A 'light rider' symbolizes a cheerful heart, indicating that positivity and joy allow us to thrive and endure life's challenges more easily, just as a steed runs better without excessive weight.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a wellness seminar discussing the benefits of a positive mindset.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.
True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm and intelligence.
One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.
Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.
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