The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.
Interpretation
Good and bad are defined by their effects on others, either helping or hurting them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the concepts of good and bad are fundamentally about their impact on people. To discern whether an action is virtuous or harmful, we should evaluate whether it promotes well-being and assistance or causes pain and suffering.
In practice
In a debate on ethics, this quote can illustrate the importance of the consequences of actions.
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?
He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing _x000D_ That is more than your own. _x000D_ Let it brush your cheeks _x000D_ As it divides and rejoins behind you. _x000D_ _x000D_ The trees you planted in childhood have grown _x000D_ Too heavy. You cannot bring them along. _x000D_ Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.
I am a socialist; of course I am a socialist. To hold a vision that society can be fundamentally different, to believe that all people can be equal - that is not a new idea.
Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.
All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy - it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.
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