There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that adhering strictly to external laws can undermine personal autonomy and spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the nature of obedience and the human tendency to seek external laws or guidelines to follow. By labeling this habit as 'servile', Emerson implies that it diminishes our individuality and capacity for self-governance, urging us to embrace our inner moral compass rather than rely solely on imposed rules.
In practice
In a discussion about personal responsibility during a philosophy class.
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?
The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.
The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
The cost of a loaf is a simple thing, and so a loaf is often sought, but some things are past valuing: laughter, land, and love are never bought.
Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them.
And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn't matter. _x000D_ We have fallen into the place where everything is music.
It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe: indeed, if one may say so, we should do nothing else besides.
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