Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong
Interpretation
The quote expresses a critique of the expectation to aid those outside one's personal responsibility or connection.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote challenges the notion of philanthropy that obliges individuals to support strangers, emphasizing a sense of personal ownership and connection to those whom one helps. It questions the ethics of giving to the poor without feeling a personal duty towards them, suggesting that true obligation arises from relationships and community rather than societal pressure.
In practice
In a discussion about social responsibility during a charity event.
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?
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To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
...it's my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.
I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.
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