Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that those who embrace curiosity and imagination are more likely to encounter life's adventures and mysteries, while others miss opportunities due to complacency.
Algernon Blackwood suggests that life offers many adventures and mysterious experiences to those who actively seek them out with a sense of wonder and an imaginative mindset. In contrast, most people overlook these opportunities because they are blinded by their assumptions and fail to recognize the possibilities that exist in their surroundings. By being open and attentive, one can discover the richness of life that lies beyond the surface.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about embracing creativity and innovation in the workplace.
When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.
Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.
We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?
When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.
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