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?
To tell you the truth, the older I get, the less I know. I keep meeting people, both older and younger, who seem to have accrued so much more knowledge or expertise or certainty about who they are and the jobs they do. I just marvel at it.
For such, _x000D_ Being made beautiful overmuch, _x000D_ Consider beauty a sufficient end, _x000D_ Lose natural kindness and maybe _x000D_ The heart-revealing intimacy _x000D_ That chooses right, and never find a friend.
The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
For any practice to work, the mind which is meditating on the object must merge. Often they are facing each other. One has to become completely absorbed, then the transformation will occur.
PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.
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