Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong
Interpretation
The quote expresses a critique of the expectation to aid those outside one's personal responsibility or connection.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote challenges the notion of philanthropy that obliges individuals to support strangers, emphasizing a sense of personal ownership and connection to those whom one helps. It questions the ethics of giving to the poor without feeling a personal duty towards them, suggesting that true obligation arises from relationships and community rather than societal pressure.
In practice
In a discussion about social responsibility during a charity event.
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 put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.
I know the place. It is true. Everything we do Corrects the space Between death and me And you.
Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust; Bear the fruit that bear you must; Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. Welcome and entertain them all!
But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
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