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?
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: search after Truth through non-violent means. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth.
I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation.
The acceptance of all that God has given us and the willingness to let it go - to give it back to him at a moment's notice - that's true human freedom.
Everything lives and lasts by the inner necessity of its being, by its own nature's need.
But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?" "You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.
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