Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Interpretation
Embrace risks and learn from your experiences without fear of failure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of taking risks and experimenting in life. He encourages individuals to overcome fear and timidity, suggesting that even failures are valuable lessons that contribute to personal growth and resilience. The act of 'getting rolled in the dirt' symbolizes the inevitable setbacks one faces, but it also serves as an opportunity to rise again, equipped with newfound courage and wisdom.
In practice
In a motivational speech encouraging young entrepreneurs to take risks.
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?
Having the courage to take the steps we always wanted to take is the only way of showing that we trust in God.
Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victory! Now 's the day and now 's the hour; See the front o' battle lour.
Faith is the antidote for fear.
Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.
It's not the moutain we conquer but ourselves.
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