The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.
Interpretation
Love is a powerful force that inspires and uplifts people, promoting hope and aspiration.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the admirable qualities of love, suggesting that it inherently seeks elevation and positivity. He contrasts love's uplifting nature with despair, indicating that love encourages individuals to look for the best in themselves and each other, thus fostering hope and aspiration rather than hopelessness.
In practice
This quote would be perfect for a wedding speech to celebrate the power of love in uniting two people.
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?
There are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our encouragement, who will need our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give.
Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: Thatβs it. Thatβs my heart.
You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.
The best thing I ever saw was a man who loved his wife.
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
It seemed a marvel to her that any mortal should suffer for lack of love, and yet she had never known a mortal who didn't feel unloved. There was enough love just in this ugly hallway, she thought, that no one should ever feel the lack of it again. She peered at the parents, imagining their hearts like machines, manufacturing surfeit upon surfeit of love for their children, and then wondered how something could be so awesome and so utterly powerless.
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