Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that recognizing someoneβs limitations can diminish our fascination or interest in them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that once we become aware of the limitations and flaws of others, particularly men in this instance, our interest in them often wanes. This speaks to a broader human tendency to be captivated by potential and possibility, which can fade when faced with the reality of an individual's shortcomings. It implies that our perceptions are influenced by our expectations and that limitations can overshadow true qualities.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture discussing human behavior and expectations.
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.
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?
Enthusiasm is the engine of success.
What preoccupies us, then, is not God as a fact of nature, but as a fabrication useful for a God-fearing society. God himself becomes not a power but an image.
Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.
Many introverts feel there's something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you're not, you lose a part of yourself along the way. You especially lose a sense of how to spend your time.
It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.
Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult - at least I have found it so - than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind...We behold the face of nature bright with gladness...We do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects and seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life.
I have to feel myself doing what's right. If I'm the arbiter of that instead of letting the guy on TV be that or someone who doesn't know me at all, then I think that's a much better way to live.
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