The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Interpretation
Civilization may lead to the downfall of humanity due to its excesses and complexities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests a pessimistic view of civilization, indicating that the very advancements and complexities that define civilized life could ultimately contribute to humanity's extinction. The focus on progress, technology, and societal structures may create an unsustainable environment that could lead to self-destruction, prompting reflection on the balance between civilization and human survival.
In practice
During a debate on the impact of technology on society, this quote can highlight the potential risks of advancements.
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?
India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.
The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.
So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
Because I have work to care about, it is possible that I may be less difficult to get along with than other women when the double chins start to form.
When the gospel is at stake, everything is at stake.
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