There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.
Interpretation
Drinking can isolate individuals from society and reality.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the detrimental effects of alcohol consumption, suggesting that it not only alienates individuals from social interactions but also ultimately distances them from the broader experiences of life. It serves as a cautionary observation about the potential for addiction and the longing for escapism that drinking can offer, which may lead to a complete withdrawal from both society and the essence of existence.
In practice
This quote could be referenced in a discussion about the social impacts of alcohol at a community health seminar.
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?
Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache... Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
Why has time disappeared in our culture? How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left? We are a time-poor society; we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance. The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life.
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