The mark of a man of the world is absence of pretension.
Interpretation
True wisdom involves being genuine and without artificiality in one's interactions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that a truly worldly or knowledgeable person is characterized by their authenticity; they do not put on a facade or pretend to be someone theyβre not. This absence of pretension signifies a deep understanding of oneself and the value of honesty in human relationships, suggesting that being true to oneself is the mark of maturity and sophistication.
In practice
A speaker at a seminar about personal development might use this quote to emphasize the importance of being genuine.
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?
To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.
There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.
Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.
Every single person in this world is a minority in one way or another. It just depends on how you slice the pie.
The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.
One's true worth as a human being is not a matter of outward appearance or title, but derives rather from the breadth of one's spirit. Everything comes down to faith and conviction. It is what is in one's heart, and the substance of one's actions that count.
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