Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again; never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.
Interpretation
Be mindful of your thoughts as they come unexpectedly and can easily be forgotten if not acknowledged.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the importance of being aware of our thoughts as they can appear suddenly and be deeply insightful. If we neglect these thoughts, treating them as mere distractions from our daily tasks, they may vanish forever, leaving us with a gap in our understanding and creativity that could take years to revisit or rediscover.
In practice
Using this quote in a workshop on mindfulness to emphasize the significance of paying attention to one's thoughts.
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 it can be solved, there's no need to worry, and if it can't be solved, worry is of no use.
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.
Often miracles are happening right in front of our eyes, but we think they should look different, so we miss them though they're right there.
Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of haviong an evil thought during the game.
The life so short, the crafts so long to learn.
Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
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