His face is livid, gaunt his whole body, his breath is green with gall; his tongue drips poison.
John Quincy AdamsRead
The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.
Interpretation
Our actions and relationships with others create a lasting impact that extends beyond our own lives.
This quote by John Quincy Adams highlights the idea that the legacies we leave through our interactions, relationships, and the influence we have on others contribute to a form of immortality. It suggests that while our physical existence may be transient, the positive impacts we make can resonate through time and continue to affect future generations, thus granting us a sense of eternal relevance and continuity in the lives we touch.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of community service.
His face is livid, gaunt his whole body, his breath is green with gall; his tongue drips poison.
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?
The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
I have no predilection for unpopularity as such, but I hold it much preferable to the popularity of a day, which perishes with the transient topic upon which it is grounded.
According to the Stoics, all vice was resolvable into folly: according to the Christian principle, it is all the effect of weakness.
Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience.
That's the only place in all the lands we've ever heard of that we don't want to see any closer; and that's the one place we're trying to get to! And that's just where we can't get, nohow.
No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.
In many ways, astrology, numerology and palmistry are corruptions of the occult because they have attempted to make a practice out of something that is essentially imaginative.
I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.
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