As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.
Interpretation
Our thoughts and choices shape who we are.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the power of our thoughts and decisions in shaping our identity and character. It suggests that the way we think influences our actions and ultimately defines us as individuals, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and intentional choices in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal development.
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?
Often times we call a man [or woman] cold when he [or she] is only sad.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Freedom always deals with 'the possible'; this gives freedom its great flexibility, its fascination, and its dangers.
Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.
We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.
Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount.
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