Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
Interpretation
Perception shapes our reality, reflecting our inner state rather than external truths.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that perception is subjective and acts as a mirror of our inner thoughts and feelings. What we observe in the world is not an objective reality but rather a reflection of our own mental state, suggesting that our interpretations and judgments are colored by our emotions and mindset.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-awareness.
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?
We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.
Love of country is the Mason's deed; world citizenship is his thought.
The problem of pornography is that it does not reveal too much of a woman but too little.
As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things.
A belief in feminism is a belief in personal freedom - the freedom to live a life free of fear of violence, to select a fulfilling career and be compensated fairly, to choose when to start a family, to marry whom you love. I want everyone, regardless of gender, to live a life free of restriction or fear, able to pursue their own personal brand of happiness and fulfillment.
History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
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