Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.
Interpretation
This quote questions the reverence for past traditions and beliefs, suggesting they can undermine personal authority and clarity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in this quote critiques the tendency to idolize the past, implying that such veneration can lead to a loss of personal sanity and undermine oneβs inner authority. He suggests that the weight of historical precedents can cloud judgment and obstruct genuine self-awareness, thus challenging individuals to seek their own truths rather than adhere blindly to what has been established.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of personal beliefs versus societal expectations.
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?
To me, it really seems visible today that ethics is not something exterior to the economy, which, as technical matter, could function on its own; rather, ethics is an interior principle of the economy itself, which cannot function if it does not take account of the human values of solidarity and reciprocal responsibility.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to all things... The complete whole is the complete whole. So also is any part the complete whole... But forget about understanding and harmonizing and making all things one. The universe is already a harmonious oneness; just realize it.
When all is said and done, what constitutes the impregnable superiority of Christianity over all other types of Faith is that it is ever more consciously identified with a Christogenesis: in other words, with an awareness of the rise of a certain universal Presence which is at once immortalizing and unifying.
But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.
In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will.
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