Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?
Interpretation
The meaning we assign to nature is shaped by our thoughts and perspectives.
In this quote, Emerson reflects on how the natural elements of mountains, waves, and skies do not possess inherent significance; rather, their meaning arises from the way we choose to interpret and represent them in relation to our thoughts and emotions. This underscores the power of human perception and the subjective nature of meaning in the world around us.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of perspective in art, this quote can illustrate how artists imbue meaning into their work based on their 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?
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
How loved, how honored once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot A heap of dust alone remains of thee 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power - people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army - then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
It's so kind of you to want to visit me in my loneliness. - The Wicked Witch of the West. Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking. - The Tin Woodsman Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.
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