Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that people often expend more effort in negative pursuits than in seeking positive or virtuous outcomes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the notion that individuals frequently invest significant energy and determination in actions that lead to negative consequences, such as moral failure or vice, while achieving positive outcomes, such as spiritual enlightenment or virtue, might require far less effort. It challenges us to reconsider how we allocate our efforts and encourages a shift toward pursuing better and more fulfilling goals in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about career choices.
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?
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won.
Holiness is a disposition of the heart that makes us humble and little in the arms of God, aware of our weakness, and confident - in the most audacious way - in His Fatherly goodness.
What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious.
Anything that is western origin, first you verify it, then accept it. Anything that is Indian origin, first accept it, then verify it if necessary.
Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
The law of God cannot be fulfilled by external obedience.
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