The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Interpretation
Boasting about one's integrity often reveals insecurities and hidden flaws.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that those who overly emphasize their honor or principles may actually be compensating for a lack of true integrity. Instead of gaining respect, their loud claims lead others to be skeptical and alert to their possible dishonesty, as symbolized by the act of counting spoons—monitoring what cannot be taken for granted.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion on integrity in leadership.
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?
Golden Rule”: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
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