Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All
Interpretation
Truth, goodness, and beauty are interconnected concepts that all stem from a singular essence.
In this quote, Emerson suggests that truth, goodness, and beauty are not isolated ideals but rather different expressions of the same fundamental reality. He emphasizes the unity of these concepts, indicating that they are all manifestations of a deeper truth that underlies our understanding of the world, encouraging us to see the interconnectedness of values and aesthetics in our lives.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of ethics in art, one might use this quote to emphasize the interconnectedness of moral values and aesthetic experiences.
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 is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer
One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy.
The Christian religion is only for one who needs infinite help, therefore only for one who feels an infinite need. The whole planet cannot be in greater anguish than a single soul. The Christian faith - as I view it - is the refuge in this ultimate anguish. To whom it is given in this anguish to open his heart, instead of contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart.
The executives who run the fast food industry are not bad men. They are businessmen. They will sell free-range, organic, grass-fed hamburgers if you demand it. They will sell whatever sells at a profit.
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