No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
Interpretation
Dogs and horses understand humans better than philosophers do.
This quote by Herman Melville highlights the deep bond between humans and animals, particularly dogs and horses. It suggests that these animals have a unique ability to perceive human emotions and behaviors, often providing insight into our nature that is more profound than that offered by human philosophers, who can sometimes overcomplicate understanding through abstract reasoning.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of empathy in understanding others.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
Maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything.
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
I just need the junkies and the liars and the thieves,_x000D_ _x000D_ I need the pimps, prostitutes and pushers out in the streets._x000D_ _x000D_ That's where I'm seeking God, cause that's where He found me.
I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
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