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?
Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just donβt do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.
Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.
Work is and always has been my salvation and I thank the Lord for it.
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?
The whole of meditation practice can be essentialized into these 3 crucial points: Bring your mind home. Release. And relax!
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