Compensation

  I read this piece from an essay on "Compensation" by Emerson that intrigued me. I think you'll find it interesting.

  Dualism and compensation underlies the nature and condition of man.

Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure, has an equal penalty put on its abuse. 

For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something else.

If riches increase, they are increased that use them.

If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner.

There is always some leveling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, and the rich. Is a man too strong and fierce for society and by temper and position a bad citizen, a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him? Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooth’s his grim scowl to courtesy. Nature takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps her balance true.

The farmer imagines that power and position are fine things. But the President has paid dearly for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. R. W. Emerson