A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents.
Interpretation
Embrace your flaws and recognize the potential burden of your strengths.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that one should appreciate their shortcomings as they contribute to personal growth and understanding. At the same time, it alludes to the idea that great talent can also lead to fear or responsibility, implying a balance between self-acceptance and the recognition of oneβs capabilities.
In practice
In a personal development workshop, one could use this quote to encourage participants to reflect on their flaws positively.
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?
Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking. I cannot tell you anything that deep within you don't already know. When you have reached a certain stage of inner connectedness, you recognize the truth when you hear it. If you haven't reached that stage yet, the practice of body awareness will bring about the deepening that is necessary.
Your character defects are not where you're bad, but where you're wounded. But no matter who or what causes the wound, it's yours now and you're responsible for it.
You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.
Character is like a tree, and reputation is like its shadow.
When you label so much of what happens to you as 'bad,' it reinforces the feeling that you are a powerless pawn at the mercy of outside forces over which you have no control. And - this is key - labeling something a bad thing almost guarantees that you'll experience it as such.
Thank goodness for all the things you are not, thank goodness you're not something someone forgot, and left all alone in some punkerish place, like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space.
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