Far off, men swell, bully, and threaten; bring them hand to hand, and they are feeble folk.
Interpretation
People often appear bold and threatening from a distance, but up close, they can be quite weak and timid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the nature of human behavior, suggesting that individuals who seem powerful and aggressive when separated by distance often lose their bravado when confronted directly. This highlights the disparity between perceived strength and true character, revealing that many who posture boldly may lack substance and courage when faced with real interactions.
In practice
In a motivational speech discussing the true nature of courage.
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?
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
Whether on'e special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.
Science is nothing but perception.
The purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure class.
What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.
But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.
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