Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again; never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
Interpretation
Be mindful of your thoughts as they come unexpectedly and can easily be forgotten if not acknowledged.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the importance of being aware of our thoughts as they can appear suddenly and be deeply insightful. If we neglect these thoughts, treating them as mere distractions from our daily tasks, they may vanish forever, leaving us with a gap in our understanding and creativity that could take years to revisit or rediscover.
In practice
Using this quote in a workshop on mindfulness to emphasize the significance of paying attention to one's thoughts.
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?
There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.
For the young people here: practicality is a good thing. There are times where compromise is necessary. That's part of wisdom. But it's also important to hang on to what you believe.
Commend me to sterling honesty though clad in rags.
He is the best preacher, not that tickles the ear, but that breaks the heart.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there.
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