The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.
Interpretation
Both active and inactive lives can hinder progress if they are steeped in routine.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the paradox that too much routine can stifle growth and advancement, just as much as inaction can. It suggests that while being busy and active has its merits, if one's activities are bound by a strict routine, they may limit opportunities for innovation and change, ultimately leading to stagnation.
In practice
In a discussion about time management strategies, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of flexibility in routines for personal growth.
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?
Whatever someone did to you in the past has no power over the present. Only you give it power.
Rich, 'the Old Man said dreamily, 'is not baying after what you can't have. Rich is having the time to do what you want to do. Rich is a little whiskey to drink and some food to eat and a roof over your head and a fish pole and a boat and a gun and a dollar for a box of shells. Rich is not owing any money to anybody, and not spending what you haven't got.
You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.
We aren't, as human beings, very good at acting in our best interest.
A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.
Never confuse activity with accomplishment.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.