Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.
Interpretation
Good breeding combines kindness and the ability to be independent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the importance of good breeding as a virtue that encompasses both kindness towards others and the independence of thought and action. This union suggests that true refinement comes not just from social etiquette, but from a deeper moral character and self-reliance, promoting respectful and compassionate interactions while also valuing autonomy.
In practice
In a speech about personal development, one might say: 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence,' which reminds us to cultivate both our compassion and our self-reliance.'
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 more humble and obedient to God a man is, the more wise and at peace he will be in all that he does.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
If you're behind the times, they won't notice you. If you're right in tune with them, you're no better than they are, so they won't care much for you. Be just a little ahead of them.
If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent.
I keep my enemies close/ I give 'em enough rope/ They put themselves in the air/ I just kick away the chair.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.
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