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?
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.
It's never what people do that makes us angry; it's what we tell ourselves about what they did.
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
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