The influence of the senses have in men overpowered the thought to the degree that the walls of time and space have come to look solid, real and insurmountable. .. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the power of the mind. Man is capable of abolishing them both.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that our perception limits our understanding of time and space, which can be transcended by the power of the mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson asserts that human senses can dominate thought so intensely that we come to regard time and space as concrete barriers. However, he suggests that these notions are merely reflections of our mental capabilities, implying that the mind has the potential to transcend these limitations. This invites us to reconsider our relationship with reality and the bounds we perceive in our existence.
In practice
In a discussion about the limitations of human understanding in a philosophy class.
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?
The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.
From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.
All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory: every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel. That is the effort, the labour of the Antillean imagination, rebuilding its gods from bamboo frames, phrase by phrase.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
The media and the rest of popular culture weren't recording people's reactions to 9/11; they were forcing made-up reactions down people's throats.
It became clear over time that white people have extremely low thresholds for enduring any discomfort associated with challenges to our racial worldviews.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.