Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.
Interpretation
Contributing meaningfully to society will lead to your own fulfillment and support.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of being valuable and indispensable in the world. When you make yourself essential by offering solutions, skills, or support, society will recognize your efforts and, in return, provide for your needs, symbolized here by 'bread'. It highlights a reciprocal relationship between selflessness and personal gain.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding purpose in life, you could use this quote to inspire the audience.
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?
Whether I'm 40, 50 or 60, I'm going to be as physically strong as I am able.
In life, winning and losing will both happen. What is never acceptable is quitting.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
I think the future also will not belong to those who are cynical or those who stand on the sidelines
The message of frustration is an exciting signal. it means that your brain beleives you could be doing better than you currently are.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.
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