But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Bobinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing.
Interpretation
Emerson critiques the misguided belief that the pursuit of wealth benefits society, highlighting the negative consequences of such values.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects on the struggle against the corrupting influence of money and the erroneous principles adopted by influential figures who believed that their pursuit of wealth and economic growth was beneficial to society. He suggests that these leaders have not only failed to enrich the country but have instead contributed to its impoverishment, illustrating a profound critique of materialism and the need for a principled approach to governance and economic policy.
In practice
During a debate on economic policy, one might quote Emerson to emphasize the pitfalls of prioritizing monetary gain over ethical governance.
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?
My books are not about how it feels to be a black man. My books are about how it feels to be a human being, and part of what I'm trying to sort out is what we mean - what I mean, what you mean, what everybody in the culture means - when they say 'black man,' or they say 'white person.'
When life is victorious, there is birth; when it is thwarted, there is death. A warrior is always engaged in a life-and-death struggle for Peace.
Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.
But manly set the world on sixe and sevene; And, if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.
When we look into the human heart we see the lust, the greed, the hate, the pride, the anger, and the jealousies that are so destructive. This is at the heart of the human predicament, and the Scriptures call this condition sin.
What is the essence of theosophy? It is the fact that man, being himself divine, can know the divinity whose life he shares. As an inevitable corollary to this supreme truth comes the fact of the brotherhood of man.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.