We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that we are not fully aware of our potential, yet we recognize that there is more to us than we understand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects the idea that human beings are on a journey of self-discovery, implying that our true selves and capabilities remain unrealized. It highlights the tension between our current understanding of ourselves and the vast potential that lies within, suggesting that personal growth is an ongoing process that requires introspection and exploration.
In practice
A motivational speaker might use this quote to inspire individuals at a personal development workshop.
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 Son of God did not want to be seen and found in heaven. Therefore he descended from heaven into this humility and came to us in our flesh, laid himself into the womb of his mother and into the manger and went on to the cross. This was the ladder that he placed on earth so that we might ascend to God on it. This is the way you must take.
Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.
...if we know God our knowledge of... everything will be brought to perfection, and, in so far as is possible, the infinite, divine and ineffable dwelling place (cf. Jn. 14:2) will be ours to enjoy. For this is what our sainted teacher said in his famous philosophical aphorism: 'Then we shall know as we are known' (I Cor. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.
We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.
We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery. Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans; it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.
There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating them from the "wisdom" of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline , and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.
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