We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on human flaws such as greed and indecisiveness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote critiques human nature, illustrating how our weaknesses—greed (avarice), lack of commitment (hesitation), and blind conformity (following)—affect our lives and decisions. He characterizes humanity as 'puny and fickle,' suggesting that these traits lead to a lack of authenticity and progress in our actions and choices.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and self-improvement.
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?
Your true evolution is not what you do out there. That's secondary. Your true evolution is to do with the arising of awareness in you as you go about your life.
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Everything you are comes from your choices.
It is not a lucky word, this name impossible; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
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