Pines a thousand years old. Every year they must go farther for them: they recede, like beavers and Indians, before the white man.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the gradual loss of natural and indigenous elements due to the expansion of society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the inevitability of change and loss in nature, as ancient pines, symbolizing enduring natural beauty and the indigenous people, are forced to retreat in the face of advancing civilization represented by 'the white man.' This serves as a poignant reminder of the consequences of human progress on the environment and native cultures.
In practice
In a speech about environmental preservation, I might cite this quote to stress the importance of protecting our natural resources.
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?
For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones.
It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures.
Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in a lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.
So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again.
A tree says: _x000D_ My strength is trust. _x000D_ I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. _x000D_ I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. _x000D_ I trust that God is in me. _x000D_ I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
I'd like to see animals removed from the entertainment business. Chimpanzees and apes won't perform unless you beat them. Circuses keep elephants in chains 90 percent of the time. Elephants need freedom of movement. In circuses, they live in cramped quarters, which is not the life intended for them by nature. Some are beaten daily, forced to do ridiculous tricks and robbed of every shred of dignity.
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