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?
The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?... With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
All of a Christian's life is one of repentance.
I have often thought that when I do die it will be of sheer boredom.
For many terrorists, carrying out an attack allowed them to become the heroes of their own story.
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