The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
Interpretation
People are often reluctant to follow others when they perceive their flaws or imperfections.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that individuals may struggle to earn respect and obedience due to their visible imperfections or vulnerabilities. The metaphor of 'mud at the bottom of our eye' implies that when others can see our faults, it undermines our authority and diminishes the trust they place in us, making it difficult for them to follow our lead.
In practice
In a team meeting to encourage open communication and trust.
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?
We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.
This Christmas may we be consistent in living the Gospel, welcoming Jesus into the centre of our lives.
I try to make sense of things. Which is why, I guess, I believe in destiny. There must be a reason that I am as I am. There must be.
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
The same is the case when you enter a womb, enter into a fresh body, and start the journey of desires. But if you die alert, in that alertness not only the body dies, all desires evaporate. Then there is no entering into a womb. Then entering a womb is such a painful process, it is so painful that consciously you cannot do it; only unconsciously you can do it.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.
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