Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.
Interpretation
Victory comes from hard work rather than mere luck.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that true success and victory are the results of consistent effort and diligence, rather than mere chance or fortune. He suggests that individuals should find value and glory in the work they put into their endeavors, as this is the essence of achieving meaningful accomplishments.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire students about the value of hard work.
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?
If you believe that some day it's going to happen, some day it probably will happen. You just have to make sure you're there when it's happening, and ideally you're at the front of the parade, and the principle beneficiary of when it happens.
In private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Hard work isn't enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. It's actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness.
I'm going to win it for my country. I'm the first Aboriginal to win this. Isn't that something? I wish my Dad was alive to see it. He'd be as proud as I am.
In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.