The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that creating a sentence allows for limitless expression and exploration of ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote emphasizes the power of language and the boundless possibilities that arise when one constructs a sentence. It implies that each sentence can open up new realms of thought and creativity, launching the speaker or writer into an infinite landscape of ideas, interpretations, and connections. The act of forming a sentence is not just a matter of communication; it is a profound engagement with the act of creation itself, embodying the idea that language can shape our understanding of the world.
In practice
In a public speech about the importance of literature, one could use this quote to illustrate how storytelling transcends boundaries.
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?
She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification β for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.
Christian optimism is not a sugary optimism, nor is it a mere human confidence that everything will turn out all right. It is an optimism that sinks its roots into an awareness of our freedom, and the sure knowledge of the power of grace. It is an optimism that leads us to make demands on ourselves, to struggle to respond at every moment to God's call.
It's almost as if a demon might have passed from one host to another.
I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's.
When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
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