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?
Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado.
I don't care if you're Christian, you're Muslim, you're gay, you're straight - I am here to fight for your equality. Because I believe that we are all born equal, but we are not treated equally, and that is why we must fight.
I feel vulnerable because my mind - because of the stroke, my mind doesn't focus. And then I feel vulnerable because I don't understand the world around me.
I have made speeches urging women to adopt methods of rebellion such as have been adopted by men in every revolution.
We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience... But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.
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