One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars
Interpretation
The quote contrasts the limitations imposed by others with the freedom and inspiration one can find in certain relationships.
Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects on the duality of human experience, where a negative relationship can confine and restrict one's potential, symbolized by being pinned to a wall, while a positive and uplifting relationship allows for exploration and joy, represented by walking among the stars. It highlights the impact that different individuals can have on our emotional and psychological states, emphasizing the importance of nurturing those connections that elevate us.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the value of supportive friendships.
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?
So act that anything you do may become universal law.
It is the resurrection that makes Good Friday good.
The chief enemy of peace is the spirit of unreason itself: an inability to conceive alternatives, an unwillingness to reconsider old prejudices, to part with ideological obsessions, to entertain new ideas or to improve new plans.
It is easy to think of potatoes, and fortunately for men who have not much money it is easy to think of them with a certain safety. Potatoes are one of the last things to disappear, in times of war, which is probably why they should not be forgotten in times of peace.
In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.
Opinions which justify cruelty are inspired by cruel impulses.
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