O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.
Interpretation
Happiness should come from within, not from external circumstances or the opinions of others.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the idea that true unhappiness stems from allowing others to control our emotions. It suggests that a person who lets external factors determine their happiness is vulnerable to the whims of others, and therefore lacks true inner strength and independence.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-esteem, one might quote this to encourage people to find their happiness internally.
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?
Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.
People think meditation is a huge undertaking. Don't think of it like that.
I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way.
There are books which we read early in life, which sink into our consciousness and seem to disappear without leaving a trace. And then one day we find, in some summing-up of our life and put attitudes towards experience, that their influence has been enormous.
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
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