Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Interpretation
Thought leads to language, which then manifests as action.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson illustrates the progression from thought to action. It emphasizes that our ideas (the blossom) are expressed through language (the bud), and ultimately, these expressions lead to tangible actions (the fruit). The significance lies in the importance of nurturing our thoughts and articulating them, as these are the seeds of future actions and achievements.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the power of ideas, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of bringing thoughts into reality.
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?
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.
You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy, according to Freedom House. But have you got a civilised life to lead? People want economic development first and foremost. The leaders may talk something else. You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.
Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.
It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
Instead of assuming that emotional intelligence is always useful, we need to think more carefully about where and when it matters.
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