Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that executive leaders in philanthropic and religious organizations are not typically virtuous individuals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote implies a critique of the leadership within philanthropic and religious institutions, indicating that such organizations tend to prioritize practical, often self-interested individuals for leadership roles, rather than those who are purely altruistic or morally upright. This perspective raises important questions about the nature of leadership and motivation within organizations that are meant to serve the greater good, suggesting a complex relationship between human nature and institutional goals.
In practice
During a nonprofit conference, one might quote Emerson to highlight the challenges in finding truly altruistic leaders.
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?
If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.
Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason.
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.
What is a Christian? The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.
All I'm saying is that you should show some respect for what other people see with their eyes and feel with their fingers, even though it be the exact opposite.
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