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?
It is the most powerful creation to have life growing inside of you. There is no bigger gift.
Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.
Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see.
The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers.
It is true that I have had heartache and tragedy in my life. These are things none of us avoids. Suffering is the price of being alive.
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in. A minute to smile and an hour to weep in. A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double. And that is life. A crust and a corner that makes love precious, With a smile to warm and tears to refresh us, And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter. And that is life.
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