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?
Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.
It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.
Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain." "I know," said Pooh humbly.
Soul, if you want to learn secrets, your heart must forget about shame and dignity. You are God's lover, yet you worry what people are saying.
Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you have to choose to embark on the Inward Journey to discover it
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