A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that human potential is often marred by suffering and loss, yet in innocence, life can be enriched and beautiful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the duality of human existence, comparing humans to 'gods in ruins' which implies that while we hold immense potential and greatness, our flaws and experiences of suffering often diminish that potential. Emerson suggests that in states of innocence, life can be profound and transcendent, allowing us to navigate our existence with a grace similar to waking from a dream, emphasizing the beauty of pure and unblemished life experiences.
In practice
In a graduation speech emphasizing the potential of youth and the importance of innocence.
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?
We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.
Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded Consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.
One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.
One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.
I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others.
A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.
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