Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Interpretation
Common sense and straightforwardness often surprise people more than complex ideas.
This quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the value of common sense and honesty in our interactions. It suggests that while people may often seek out grand ideas or complexities, it is the simplicity and clarity of common sense that truly astonishes and impacts others, highlighting a preference for straightforward communication in a world full of convoluted thoughts.
In practice
In a speech advocating for transparency in business practices.
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?
What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?
I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come to me from within.
Talk is cheap...It is the way we organize and use our lives everyday that tells what we believe in.
The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless... the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.
No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
No one knows enough to be a pessimist
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