Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Interpretation
Dreams can provide comfort and solace in difficult times.
In this quote, Herman Melville reflects on the power of dreams to offer shelter from life's challenges. Although reality presents many hardships, the beauty and wonder found in dreams can provide a sense of refuge and hope, encouraging individuals to find solace in their imagination and aspirations during tough times.
In practice
Use this quote during a motivational speech about the importance of pursuing dreams.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
It's the journey that matters. Learning is more important than the test. Practice well, and the games will take care of themselves.
Don't be swayed by the false values and goals of this world, but put Christ and his will first in everything you do.
When you are fully present with everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them - your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past - and are able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the key.
If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too.
When you are mute, you become a good listener - it's all one-way. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the sound.
Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place.
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