The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
Interpretation
True civilization is measured by the character and quality of its people, not by material statistics.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that the real measure of a civilized society lies not in its population size, wealth, or agricultural success, but rather in the moral and ethical standards of its individuals. He suggests that it is the nature of the people within a society that defines its greatness and future potential.
In practice
In a speech on community values, one might say, 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, the true test of civilization is the character of our people.'
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?
Flashbacks rarely involve language. Mine certainly didn't. They were visual, motor, and sensory, and they took place in a relentless, horrifying present.
Policy makers, like most people, normally feel that they already know all the psychology and all the sociology they are likely to need for their decisions. I don't think they are right, but that's the way it is.
What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.
There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.
Mission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology. The classical doctrine of the missio dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit [is] expanded to include yet another βmovementβ: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world.
Listen; this world is the lunatic's sphere , _x000D_ Don't always agree it's real, _x000D_ Even with my feet upon it And the postman knowing my door _x000D_ My address is somewhere else.
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