Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.
Interpretation
Focusing on one's own profession leads to greater usefulness and success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of dedication and focus in one's work. He argues that industrious individuals who commit to their lawful callings contribute meaningfully to society, while those who scatter their attention across too many interests often fail to achieve their potential and become less useful.
In practice
During a team meeting, you might share this quote to emphasize the importance of concentrating on assigned tasks.
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 first duty of a man is to think for himself
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act - if you can't control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
I'm not out trying to prove anything. I'm sort of finished with that, so I get to play in other sandboxes and try and figure out what I like and I'm interested in.
His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere.
It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
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