Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
Interpretation
Love is a profound force that reflects the true value of humanity.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the seriousness and depth of love, portraying it as a divine essence that transcends triviality. He suggests that love should be understood as a fundamental aspect of human worth and dignity, rather than something to be taken lightly or casually.
In practice
In a wedding speech to highlight the importance of love in marriage.
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?
Ah when will this long weary day have end, And lend me leave to come unto my love? How slowly do the hours their numbers spend! How slowly does sad Time his feathers move!
Love has been defined, analyzed, explained and excused. It has been the cause of wars, feuds, heroism, martyrdom, inordinate passion, and beautiful friendships. It pulls two people of opposite temperaments together into a married state and permits them to live happily. It makes friends understand each other without the necessity of words.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death; Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago
Love, oneness, is no separation between you and life. It is a progressive letting go, a progressive not fault finding. Just do nothing and love this moment. Its very beautiful and very deep.
Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.
A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.
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