Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.
Interpretation
Life may be brief, but we should prioritize being courteous towards others.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of courtesy in our daily lives, despite the fleeting nature of time. It suggests that regardless of how short life may be, we should always take a moment to show kindness and respect to others, as these gestures can significantly impact their lives and our relationships.
In practice
In a speech about personal values, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of kindness.
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?
Learn to respect this sacred moment of birth, as fragile, as fleeting, as elusive as dawn.
I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, Iβm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.
Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they come and see it and say, 'That's nice', and then they go home.
To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle. I have adopted the technique of living life miracle to miracle.
It's okay, girl, we'll make it till the sun goes down forever. And until then what you got to lose but the losing? We're fallen angels who didn't believe that nothing means nothing.
Leisure consists in all those virtuous activities by which a man grows morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living.
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