Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.
Interpretation
People tend to become conservative when they are comfortable or complacent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that during times of relaxation and abundance, individuals may lean towards conservative views and reluctance to change, indicating a psychological state influenced by comfort. This reflects a broader understanding of human behavior, where the lack of challenge or necessity can lead to stagnant thinking and an adherence to the status quo.
In practice
During a lecture on political philosophy, you can use this quote to illustrate how personal comfort influences political attitudes.
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 people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world.
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him
As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.
The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked...that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.
Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem
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