A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
Interpretation
True beauty is revealed when one embraces virtue with an open heart and mind.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the most profound and enchanting beauty emerges when an individual cultivates a deep appreciation for virtue. It implies that the opening of our hearts and minds to virtuous principles allows us to perceive a beauty that transcends the superficial, enriching our experience of life and the world around us.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the importance of moral values in personal growth.
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?
Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.
We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.
I was thanking him for...well, for something I'm not sure I can explain even now. For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose.
It is almost as presumptuous to think you can do nothing as to think you can do everything.
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