We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of experiencing meaningful moments rather than simply counting years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the true essence of life lies not in its duration but in the depth and quality of the experiences we have. He emphasizes that spiritual richness and significant moments define our existence more than the mere passage of time, advocating for a life that prioritizes meaningful experiences over a long, unremarkable life.
In practice
In a graduation speech to emphasize the importance of meaningful experiences over mere age.
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?
Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.
It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!
All experience and phenomena are understood to be a dream, this should not be just an intellectual understanding, but a vivid and lucid experience...Genuine integration of this point produces a profound change in the individual's response to the world. Grasping and aversion is greatly diminished, and the emotional tangles that once seemed so compelling are experienced as the tug of dream stories, and no more.
On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.
Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.
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