The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Interpretation
Boasting about one's integrity often reveals insecurities and hidden flaws.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that those who overly emphasize their honor or principles may actually be compensating for a lack of true integrity. Instead of gaining respect, their loud claims lead others to be skeptical and alert to their possible dishonesty, as symbolized by the act of counting spoons—monitoring what cannot be taken for granted.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion on integrity in leadership.
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 most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.
Some journeys are direct, and some are circuitous; some are heroic, and some are fearful and muddled. But every journey, honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need
The world is split between those who do not sleep because they are hungry and those who do not sleep because they are afraid of those who are hungry.
Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.
The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.