Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on societal values and the allure of superficiality over profound virtues.
In this quote, Emerson contrasts the magnetic appeal of gypsies, who embody freedom and allure, with the apostles, who represent moral integrity and spiritual depth. It prompts the reader to consider the societal inclination towards superficial attractiveness and the underlying implications of such preferences in a moral and philosophical context.
In practice
In a discussion about societal trends and moral values, one could use this quote to highlight the allure of superficial beauty over deeper virtue.
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 ways we miss our lives are life.
Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
Awareness of the inner body is consciousness remembering its origin and returning to the Source.
Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.
I have become convinced that the more wealth a country accumulates, the more isolated and lonely its people become. The loneliest are usually the children and the elderly. Children learn what they live, and isolation in the βvillageβ is one of the most destructive messages we daily write on the tablets of their hearts.
When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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