If you would serve your brother it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Interpretation
Stay true to your values and actions, regardless of others' opinions.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of remaining authentic to oneself and one's actions, even when faced with criticism or lack of approval from others. He encourages individuals to embrace their unique contributions and to find satisfaction in their actions, especially when those actions may deviate from societal norms and expectations, helping to break the monotony of conformity.
In practice
During a motivational speech about embracing one's uniqueness.
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?
Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
Work is valued by the social value of the worker.
Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.
The day that hunger is eradicated from the earth there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world.
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