Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.
Interpretation
Some people possess inner qualities that are so valuable that excessive praise can diminish their true nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests that there are individuals whose intrinsic qualities are so exceptional that they do not require external validation through praise; in fact, such praise may even distort their true essence. The idea emphasizes the importance of humility and the notion that genuine qualities should stand independently without needing to be bolstered by others' commendations.
In practice
During a speech about personal growth, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of humility.
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 part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.
When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.
Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That's something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.
Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology
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