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?
And knowing what happens on average is a good place to start. By so doing, we insulate ourselves from the tendency to build our thinking - our daily decisions, our laws, our governance - on exceptions and anomalies rather than on reality
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.
I invented nothing new, I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom there was centuries of work.
Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.
I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
In the presence of your Satguru, knowledge flourishes; sorrow diminishes; without any reason joy wells up; lack diminishes, abundance dawns and all talents manifest
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