In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the limitless potential and individuality of every person.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote speaks to the idea that each individual possesses infinite value and possibilities. It suggests that within every person lies an immense depth of character, experience, and potential that should be recognized and nurtured. This doctrine aligns with Emerson's broader transcendentalist beliefs, emphasizing self-reliance and the inherent worth of the individual in a society that often pressures conformity.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and development.
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?
No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.
You say I have the most wicked face of any woman. You say my hair is like the serpent locks of Medusa, that my eyes have the cruel cunning of Borgia, that my mouth is the mouth of the sinister scheming Delilah, that my hands are like the talons of a Circe or the blood-bathing Elizabeth Bathory. And then you ask me of my soul—you wish to know if it is reflected in my face.
Believe me, when I say; There are no two powers That command the soul. One is God The other is the tide. -Anon From the novel Abarat
Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead— but first get permit.
I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in 'renouncing' one's own self, by which I mean making up one's mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being 'happy' or 'unhappy' in the usual meaning of the words.
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