The world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Interpretation
Life is a transient experience, and we have the potential to awaken to greater truths.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the world as we perceive it is akin to a dream, filled with illusions and uncertainties. The 'awake' signifies a moment of realization or enlightenment where one recognizes the deeper truths and beauties of life, akin to seeing the 'glories and certainties of day' after a night of dreams.
In practice
During a discussion about the nature of reality.
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 liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.
In essentials, unity; in differences, liberty; in all things, charity.
What we make of people, and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, what memories we have, and whether our loyalties are to the past, the present or the future.
Last I checked, Bill Gates was worth $50 billion. If the average employed adult, who is walking in a hurry, will pick up a quarter from the sidewalk, but not a dime, then the corresponding amount of money given their relative wealth that Bill Gates would ignore if he saw it lying on the street is $25,000.
There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief.
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
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