The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Too much wish, too little skill and patience... Some opportunities must be declined or drastically reduced in order for the life go on uninterrupted.

It is a changing world with changing opportunities.

Some of the best opportunities in the world are the most obvious ones.
Thomas G. Stemberg

when one door opens, another one slams in your face

Read this quote in context, it is great as all Emerson's from :
"The Complete Works" 1904 - Vol. VIII.
Letters and Social Aims

IV. Resources

GO where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.

DAY by day for her darlings to her much she added more;
In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber was a door,
A door to something grander,—loftier walls, and vaster floor.

MEN are made up of potencies. We are magnets in and iron globe. We have keys to all doors. We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck; the earth sensitive as iodine to light; the most plastic and impressionable medium, alive to every touch, and, whether searched by the plough of Adam, the sword of Cæsar, the boat of Columbus, the telescope of Galileo, or the surveyor’s chain of Picard, or the submarine telegraph,—to every one of these experiments it makes a gracious response. I am benefited by every observation of a victory of man over Nature; by seeing that wisdom is better than strength; by seeing that every healthy and resolute man is an organiser, a method coming into a confusion and drawing order out of it. We are touched and cheered by every such example. We like to see the inexhaustible riches of Nature, and the access of every soul to her magazines.

Read al his work: http://www.bartleby.com/90/0804.html

"We like to see the inexhaustible riches of Nature, and the access of every soul to her magazines." This passage explains the original quote, Emerson's generous meaning.

Unfortunately, the abusive access to Nature's "inexhaustible riches" is beginning to curtail her magazine.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

I have to be in the same plain with him to understand what he said.
But I think strings of tention may mean that I have to run my life the best possible way just to get to all gates in the world. Come hell or high water, I must grab some opportunities!