Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that what we see is only a small part of a larger reality that is not immediately visible.
Anaxagoras' quote emphasizes the idea that our perceptions and appearances are limited and do not encompass the entirety of truth or reality. It invites us to look beyond superficial observations to understand the deeper, often hidden aspects of existence, encouraging a thoughtful examination of the world around us.
In practice
In a discussion about human nature, one might use this quote to illustrate the complexity of people's inner lives.
The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.
It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me.
Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.
And since the portions of the great and the small are equal in number, so too all things would be in everything. Nor is it possible that they should exist apart, but all things have a portion of everything.
The descent into Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.
Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.
What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.
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