Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that material wealth is insignificant compared to love, truth, and moral integrity, which hold sacred value.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson contrasts the triviality of commerce and material pursuits with the profound importance of love, faith, and truthfulness in one's character. He asserts that these deeper human aspirations and virtues are what truly matter and hold sacred significance in our lives, suggesting that one's character and relationships are far more valuable than any commercial success or material gain.
In practice
In a speech about personal values, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of integrity over material success.
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 lotus grows in muddy waters but this flower does not show any trace of it: So we have to live in the world.
The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.
Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
In real life the people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
Religion was supposed to be a blanket drawn up to your chin to keep you warm, a promise that when it came to the end, you wouldn't die alone - but it could just as easily leave you shivering out in the cold, if WHAT you believed became more important than the fact THAT you believed.
If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will.
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