Some men, at the approach of a dispute, neigh like horses.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that some individuals react to conflicts or disputes in a way that is loud and unrefined, similar to horses neighing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson uses this metaphor to illustrate how certain people respond to disagreements or confrontations with brashness and noise, rather than with reasoned dialogue. The comparison to horses emphasizes a lack of self-control and an instinctual rather than thoughtful reaction, suggesting that in disputes, some individuals prefer to make a scene rather than engage in meaningful discussion.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate to emphasize the importance of calm communication over loud arguments.
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?
My whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice, these are my invincible arms; they can move hearts far better than words, I know it by experience.
But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.
If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
Because every portion of the body, mind, and spirit yearns for the integration of yin and yang, angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs. . . . Where ordinary intercourse unites sex organs with sex organs, angelic cultivation unites spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and every cell of one body with every cell of the other body.
In the person with autism, the brain may already be seeing the part and be less distracted by the whole, and in the person without autism the brain may have to set aside its picture of the whole to analyze the detail.
Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.
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