The dice of God are always loaded.
Interpretation
Life is influenced by forces beyond our control, suggesting that outcomes are predetermined.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson implies that the events of life are not purely random but are influenced by a higher power or fate. The 'dice of God' metaphor illustrates the idea that the universe has its own rules and that we may not always be the masters of our own destinies, highlighting the role of divine will or cosmic design in determining our experiences and outcomes.
In practice
In a speech discussing the unpredictability of life, you might say, 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the dice of God are always loaded.'
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?
A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.
whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
There's this romantic idea that's built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided.
The effect of one good-hearted person is incalculable.
How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?
Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.
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