In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Interpretation
Taking risks requires decisiveness and confidence in your actions.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that in situations that are precarious or uncertain, such as skating over thin ice, the best approach is to act swiftly and with confidence. Hesitation can lead to danger; therefore, moving quickly can often ensure safety and success, reflecting a broader principle about life where fear must be met with proactive measures.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage students to pursue their 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?
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear
One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest.
Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.
The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.
What I did at Ole Miss had nothing to do with going to classes. My objective was to destroy the system of white supremacy.
Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.
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