The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that many people tend to rely on others rather than acting independently or taking initiative.
Ralph Waldo Emerson critiques the collective mindset of society, emphasizing that most individuals lack the courage and habit to think and act for themselves. This behavior leads to a reliance on the influence of others, eroding personal originality and self-reliance, which are essential qualities for individual growth and authentic living.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about individuality versus conformity.
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?
Sin is hell, grace is heaven; what madness it is to look more at hell than heaven.
My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds even; but gather them in the one garden you may call your own.
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
Fundamentally, mankind was unimportant in the ecological system. Then, in one fell swoop, an evolutionary blink of an eye, the human race is transformed from something unimportant to the most important thing in the world.
The problem with airports is that we go there when we need to catch a plane - and because it's so difficult to find the way to the gate, we tend not to look around at our surroundings.
An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
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