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?
Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.
I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family - it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner; everyone knows everyone and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to sit.
All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.
There is a reason that many African Americans have a healthy mistrust for law enforcement. We don't always feel protected or served by that particular institution.
The confusing of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.
Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage.
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