The mark of a man of the world is absence of pretension.
Interpretation
True wisdom involves being genuine and without artificiality in one's interactions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that a truly worldly or knowledgeable person is characterized by their authenticity; they do not put on a facade or pretend to be someone theyβre not. This absence of pretension signifies a deep understanding of oneself and the value of honesty in human relationships, suggesting that being true to oneself is the mark of maturity and sophistication.
In practice
A speaker at a seminar about personal development might use this quote to emphasize the importance of being genuine.
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 essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.
A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.
Fur is not luxury: it is an industry of death and suffering.
I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.
It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene. 'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.' 'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.
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