People only see what they are prepared to see.
Interpretation
Perception is shaped by one's readiness to understand and accept information.
This quote emphasizes the idea that our perceptions are limited by our own readiness to engage with the truth. It suggests that individuals often overlook or fail to recognize aspects of reality unless they are mentally and emotionally prepared to acknowledge them, highlighting the subjective nature of observation and understanding in human experience.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
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?
When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
Truth that is not undergirded by love makes the truth obnoxious and the possessor of it repulsive.
This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
If one is the master of oneself, one is the resort one can depend on; therefore, one should control oneself of all.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.
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