Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.
Interpretation
Imagination allows us to perceive the world in profound ways beyond mere study, enabling a deeper understanding of realities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of imagination as a powerful tool for perception and understanding. He suggests that true insight comes not just from academic study, but from the intellect's ability to connect with and share the essence of things. By engaging with the world imaginatively, we enable others to see and understand these insights more clearly, making abstract concepts more tangible and accessible.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of creativity in education.
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?
It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.
If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'
To be free . . . to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life--that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.
When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can't defend yourself when you're militarily occupying someone else's land. That's not defense. Call it what you like, it's not defense.
Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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