The victories of character are instant, and victories for all.
Interpretation
Character victories are immediate and have a universal impact.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of character and integrity in achieving personal victories. Unlike achievements that may take time or effort to recognize, victories in character are immediate and resonate with everyone, highlighting the profound influence that personal integrity can have on the broader community.
In practice
This quote can be used as a closing statement in a speech about moral leadership.
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 neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
The main functions of intelligence, that of inventing solutions and that of verifying them, do not necessarily involve one another. The first partakes of imagination; the second alone is properly logical.
If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy.
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
Remember, you can be exalted without a college degree. You can be exalted without being slender and beautiful. You can be exalted without having a successful career. You can be exalted if you are not rich and famous. So focus the best that you can on those things in life that will lead you back to the presence of God - keeping all things in their proper balance.
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