Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
Interpretation
Make the most of your time and focus on your personal goals before it's too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the brevity of life and the importance of purposeful living. He urges individuals to focus on their own aspirations and objectives, suggesting that one should take action and not delay in pursuing what truly matters to them before time runs out.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students to pursue their dreams.
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?
They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.
I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.
I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?
Make sure you live,' she said. 'As decent as you can. I know you'll make mistakes, but sometimes you're meant to, okay?
If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her.
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