Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Interpretation
A single powerful word can convey profound meaning, making lengthy explanations unnecessary.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the power of simplicity and the impact that a single, well-chosen word can have in expressing complex ideas. It suggests that often, the essence of a thought can be captured succinctly without the need for extensive elaboration, emphasizing the importance of clarity and precision in communication.
In practice
In a speech about effective communication, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of clarity.
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?
He spent six hours examining things, trying to find a difference from their appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the passage of time.
It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.
The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful.
Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.
It is not our sexual preferences, the color of our skin, the language we speak, nor the religion we practice that creates friction, hatred and wars amongst in society. It is our words and the words of our leaders that can create that disparity.
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