The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.
Interpretation
Seriousness is often a sign of greatness, as the truly great individuals do not trivialize life.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that individuals of great stature or talent do not waste their time with trivial matters. Instead, they rise above petty concerns and maintain a perspective of seriousness about life. The great understand the importance of meaningful engagement rather than getting bogged down by the mundane or less significant aspects of existence.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of focusing on serious goals.
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?
In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.
I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.
The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it wisely or foolishly. The Bisy Backson has practically no time at all, because he's too busy wasting it by trying to save it. And by trying to save it, he ends up wasting the whole thing.
No experience is ever wasted. Everything has meaning.
When our actions create discord in another person, we, ourselves, in this lifetime or another, will feel that discord. Likewise, if our actions create harmony and empowerment in another, we also come to feel that harmony and empowerment.
We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.
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