When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.
Interpretation
Emerson highlights that genuine connection is born from love, not mere service to others.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses the idea that attempts to connect with others through service or duty often fall flat and result in a superficial relationship. He contrasts this with the deeper bond that arises from love, which fosters a sense of joy and mutual appreciation, suggesting that authentic connections are rooted in genuine feelings rather than transactional interactions.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a friendship celebration to emphasize the importance of genuine connections.
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?
Forgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm. In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurts or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.
If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters.
Someone will ask later, sometimes searching for a name, his own or someone's else's why I neglected his sadness or his love... But I didn't have enough time or ink for everyone. Or maybe it was the strain of the city, of time the cold heart of the clocks.
Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone.
A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.
Don't wait for a funeral to pay a compliment. You may not make it in time.
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