A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
Interpretation
True beauty is revealed when one embraces virtue with an open heart and mind.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the most profound and enchanting beauty emerges when an individual cultivates a deep appreciation for virtue. It implies that the opening of our hearts and minds to virtuous principles allows us to perceive a beauty that transcends the superficial, enriching our experience of life and the world around us.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the importance of moral values in personal growth.
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?
I was training to be an electrician. I suppose I got wired the wrong way round somewhere along the line.
If you are an approval addict, your behaviour is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator need do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays this game.
If you find yourself in some difficulty, step aside, and allow Buddha to take your place. The Buddha is in you.
Great doubt will eventually lead to great awakening.
Everybody is ambitious. The question is whether he is ambitious to be or ambitious to do.
By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.