Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Interpretation
Humans reflect upon and reinterpret the world around them through creativity.
This quote suggests that humanity is not separate from nature but rather an extension of it, capable of reflecting on and creating meaning from the natural world. It emphasizes the idea that our creative endeavors are a way of understanding and interacting with the universe, highlighting both our connection to nature and our unique ability to engage in self-reflection and creativity.
In practice
In a discussion about art, one might quote this to emphasize how artists interpret the world around them.
Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers?
Oh, I may be devout, but I am human all the same.
Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind.
I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
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