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?
Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.
Africa has become the big game of the nation hunters. Today, Africa looms as the greatest commercial, industrial and political prize in the world.
Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ's love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the gospel should make them.
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.
To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.