I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers.
Interpretation
To be an effective leader, one may need to step away from traditional practices that no longer serve their purpose.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the role of a minister may require reevaluation in light of changing times. He argues that adhering to outdated rituals and forms hinders spiritual growth and progress, indicating that true leadership might involve challenging the status quo and innovating beyond inherited customs.
In practice
This quote could inspire a discussion on modern leadership practices in a seminar.
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?
Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
Humanity needs justice, peace and love and we can have this only by returning with our hearts towards God who is the source of all this.
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.
I think seriousness is a mask of self-importance and self-importance in turn is a mask for self-pity. So if you're really going to pursue a spiritual way of living in the world, you must be lighthearted and carefree, have humor, be able to tolerate ambiguity and embrace uncertainty, and be forgiving of yourself and everybody else.
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