Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals
Interpretation
Life brings many experiences and events that reveal true value beyond superficiality.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that throughout life, people will encounter various situations and 'masks' that serve as metaphors for the roles and facades individuals wear. These experiences can provide profound insights and meaning that are far more valuable than the fleeting joys of superficial celebrations, like carnivals. Ultimately, it highlights the importance of looking beyond appearances to find genuine truths in life.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing deeper truths in our experiences.
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?
You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.
You are the plays you write. How on earth could you write them otherwise? They're projections of your own predilections.
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
Charity is the cement that unites communities to God and individuals to each other_x000D_ so that he who contributes to the union of hearts in a community_x000D_ binds it indissolubly to God.
Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.
For benefits return benefits; for injuries return justice without any admixture of revenge.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.