Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that women have a more attentive and perceptive way of seeing the world compared to men, who may only engage when action is required.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the different ways men and women perceive their surroundings. He suggests that women possess a natural clarity of vision that allows them to observe without the need for immediate action, while men may be more passive or less engaged in their observations unless they have a specific purpose in mind. This highlights a contrast in attentiveness and perception between the genders, implying a depth to women's observational faculties that may often go unrecognized.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about gender differences in communication styles.
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?
The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.
To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.
I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.
Never - no, not for one moment - believe that any human being, with sense in his skull, will love or respect you on account of your fine or costly clothes.
A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.
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