For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
Interpretation
The quote suggests that all efforts in life are meaningless without freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the fundamental importance of freedom in our lives. It argues that regardless of the material accomplishments we achieve, such as success in work or life, their true value is diminished if we do not possess the freedom to enjoy and utilize them. Thus, freedom is portrayed as an essential condition for a life well-lived.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech discussing the importance of civil rights.
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?
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
Like a child who suddenly stops sobbing when he is clasped in the arms of his mother, such will be the grip of heaven upon our souls.
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.
Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.
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