Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.
Interpretation
Government should evolve and grow like a living organism instead of being outdated and stagnant.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that government should not be a rigid and unchanging structure, akin to a fossil, but rather, it should be dynamic and capable of growth, like a plant. This metaphor emphasizes the importance of adaptability and innovation in governance, advocating for systems that can respond to the changing needs of society instead of remaining fossilized in outdated practices.
In practice
During a speech on reform, one might say, 'Like Emerson stated, government has been a fossil; it should be a plant to thrive with society.'
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?
Still she haunts me, phantomwise, Alice moving under skies Never seen by waking eyes.
Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason.
When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
For a man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger.
Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
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