The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the world's problems have been consistent across time, appearing bleak to each generation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the timelessness of the world's struggles and challenges. He indicates that each generation perceives the world as having a 'bankrupt look', suggesting a loss of potential or value, and implies that these feelings have persisted throughout history, connecting us with those who came before us as they faced their own trials and disillusionments.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the cyclical nature of human problems at 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?
It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.
She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.
The Life of the intellect is the best and pleasantest for man, because the intellect more than anything else is the man. Thus it will be the happiest life as well.
Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?
There is a big difference between an honest mistake made in a moment of spiritual weakness and a willfull decision to disobey persistently the commandments of God. Those who deliberately choose to violate God's commandments or ignore the standards of the Church, even when promising themselves and others that someday they will be strong enough to repent, are stepping into a dangerously slippery slope upon which many have lost their spiritual footing.
All people are special, and all moments are golden. There is no person and there is no time more special than another. Many people choose to believe that God communicates in special ways and only with special people. This removes the mass of the people from responsibility for hearing God's message, much less receiving it (which is another matter), and allows them to take someone else's word for everything.
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