If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and humility in knowledge.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that if one cannot take pride in the knowledge they possess, then they should take pride in their acknowledgment of ignorance. This idea promotes the value of humility and self-awareness, recognizing that there is wisdom in understanding one's limitations and that acknowledging what we do not know can be just as significant as knowing.
In practice
This quote can inspire students to embrace their learning journey rather than their current knowledge.
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?
You live out the confusions until they become clear.
Rhetoric is not important. Actions are.
Ipsa scientia potestas est. (Knowledge itself is power.)
Each day is a precious gift to be savored and used, not left unopened and hoarded for a future that may never come.
It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
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