We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
Interpretation
We often fail to fully express our true selves due to fear or societal pressures.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects on the idea that each person carries a unique and divine essence within them. However, many individuals struggle to fully express their true selves, often feeling ashamed or constrained by societal expectations and personal vulnerabilities. Emerson encourages us to embrace our individuality and recognize the inherent value in the ideas and identities we represent.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about embracing one's true self.
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?
From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.
It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
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