The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the world's problems have been consistent across time, appearing bleak to each generation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the timelessness of the world's struggles and challenges. He indicates that each generation perceives the world as having a 'bankrupt look', suggesting a loss of potential or value, and implies that these feelings have persisted throughout history, connecting us with those who came before us as they faced their own trials and disillusionments.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the cyclical nature of human problems at a philosophy class.
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?
Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.
blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.
I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something.
You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.
For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor
I am this space my body believes in.
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