I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.
Interpretation
Emerson highlights the steadfastness and resilience of the Englishman, drawing a parallel between people and horses.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the strength of character that he perceives in Englishmen, suggesting that they possess an inherent quality of determination and endurance, akin to the attributes they appreciate in horses. By comparing men to horses, Emerson points out that both have qualities, such as 'mettle' (courage) and 'bottom' (stamina), which are valuable and essential for facing challenges in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech on overcoming challenges, one might quote Emerson to emphasize the importance of resilience.
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?
Social reality is so complicated that, once you join one team or the other, you become specialized in detecting certain patterns, but you become blind to other patterns.
I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
'Stupidity' defines the mental state wherein we acknowledge that we've never been smarter as individuals and yet somehow we've never felt stupider. We now collectively inhabit a state of stupidity.
An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.
To the children and the innocent it's all the same.
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