To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Interpretation
The way we perceive the world depends on our mental clarity and openness.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the contrast between a closed, dull mindset and an enlightened, open one. It suggests that those who are mentally engaged and enlightened can see beauty and vibrancy in the world around them, while those with a dull mind may perceive everything as heavy and lifeless.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to inspire people to open their minds to new experiences.
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?
Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.
When you're on one of the Caribbean islands, sometimes it's hard to picture how they fit in with the rest, but when you see them all joined together like a necklace from space, you see the natural geographic connectedness of them all.
The grim frost is at hand, when apples will fall thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.
They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.
Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way.
Our planet's alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.