We must be our own before we can be another's.
Interpretation
One must first understand and be comfortable with oneself before engaging deeply with others.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of self-identity and self-awareness in the context of relationships. It suggests that in order to form meaningful and authentic connections with others, we must first nurture and understand our own individuality, values, and needs. Only when we are secure in who we are can we truly empathize with and support another person in a relationship.
In practice
During a discussion on personal growth, one might quote Emerson to emphasize the importance of self-understanding.
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?
I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community - that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale.
Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray! For prayer is a great deterrent.
Young people want you to be real with them.
I really wasn't heavy in high school. But no one feels right in their own skin, particularly in high school.
Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.
All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.
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