What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
Interpretation
Our desires are within reach if we pursue them; avoiding our fears only causes them to persist.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that what we actively search for in life can be attained, while the things we avoid or run away from will continue to linger and affect us. It encourages individuals to confront their challenges and desires, as facing them will lead to fulfillment and resolution, whereas evading them only prolongs their existence in our lives.
In practice
In a motivational speech about facing fears and pursuing dreams.
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?
Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.
Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?
For me Christ was not to be bought for thirty pieces of silver but with my heart's blood. We buy not cheap in this market.
No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempt to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.
The military mind always imagines that the next war will be on the same lines as the last. That has never been the case and never will be. One of the great factors on the next war will be aircraft obviously. The potentialities of aircraft attack on a large scale are almost incalculable.
The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.