We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.
Margaret FullerRead
The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of nurturing valuable and unique ideas over commonplace ones.
Margaret Fuller highlights the need for society to appreciate and cultivate rare and noble qualities or ideas, symbolized by the aloe plant that takes time to bloom. Without this focus, we risk settling for only the mundane and ordinary, represented by potatoes and pot-herbs, which serve as a metaphor for the easy and unremarkable choices we often make.
In practice
In a discussion about environmental preservation, I might cite this quote to emphasize the importance of nurturing rare species.
We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.
I fear I have not one good word to say this fair morning, though the sun shines so encouragingly on the distant hills and gentle river and the trees are in their festive hues. I am not festive, though contented. When obliged to give myself to the prose of life, as I am on this occasion of being established in a new home I like to do the thing, wholly and quite, - to weave my web for the day solely from the grey yarn.
Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind.
Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.
It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul.
It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
In Holland and Belgium, and afterwards in England, my happiest moments were in the country. I've always had a passion for the outdoors, for trees, for birds and flowers.
Nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.
Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms
The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
People don't want to go to the dump and have a picnic, they want to go out to a beautiful place and enjoy their day. And so I think our job is to try to take the environment, take what the good Lord has given us, and expand upon it or enhance it, without destroying it.
Calvin: Today for show and tell, I've brought a tiny miracle of nature: a single snowflake! I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water just like every other one when you bring it into the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I will be leaving you drips and going outside.
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