There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
Interpretation
Memorable experiences stem from moments of creative inspiration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the most significant and unforgettable moments in our lives are often those that resonate deeply with our imagination. These experiences, full of creativity and inspiration, leave a lasting impact and evoke strong emotions, making them stand out among the many ordinary days we encounter.
In practice
In a speech about creativity, one might say, 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out, there are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.'
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
If you don't like the word 'religion,' you can replace it with 'ideology' - it's largely the same thing. At the heart of both religion and ideology is the question of authority and where authority is coming from.
It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.
The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn.
We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.
We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be "informavores", epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
Who does not know the evils of war cannot appreciate its benefits.
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