So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?
Interpretation
The brain creates perception and understanding of the world despite lacking direct sensory input.
This quote emphasizes the power of the human brain to construct a vivid and complex understanding of the world, even in the absence of direct sensory information. It speaks to the imaginative capability of our minds to interpret reality and create meaning, highlighting the essence of human consciousness and perception.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the nature of consciousness and creativity in a philosophy class.
The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.
Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.
I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.
Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.
I don't believe in reincarnation. I feel like we're here for such an appallingly brief period of time. I believe we each get this one trip, and if we're really, really fortunate, maybe we get 70 or 80 years on Earth.
My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.
Blood, always precious, is priceless when it streams from Immanuel's side.
This is the 21st-century paradox: Even as political democracy has become the intellectual default mode for much of the world, the private sector usually trumps the public one when it comes to accommodating consumer choice.
To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.
Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.
Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.
How vainly men themselves amaze, / To win the palm, the oak, or bays; / And their incessant labours see / Crowned from some single herb or tree.
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