Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself.
Interpretation
True gifts come from the heart, not material possessions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that tangible gifts, such as jewelry, are often substitutes for genuine connection and emotional presence. The essence of a true gift lies in the selflessness of offering one's time, attention, and love to another person, rather than resorting to material items that fail to convey true affection.
In practice
During a wedding, to emphasize the importance of love over material gifts.
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?
I wanted to tell her that she was the first beautiful thing I had seen in three years. That the sight of her yawning to the back of her hand was enough to drive the breath from me. How I sometimes lost the sense of her words in the sweet fluting of her voice. I wanted to say that if she were with me then somehow nothing could ever be wrong for me again.
When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.
If you want to cure the world, don't emanate fear - emanate love.
What's powerful about a love scene is not seeing the act. It's seeing the passion, the need, the desire, the caring, the fear.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
Yet I was ready for love and joy. I wanted to let go of my pain. I wanted to pursue life instead of holding fast to fantasies of death.
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