The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.
Interpretation
People often dismiss their higher inspirations not due to true doubt, but because of negligence, which indicates a lack of wisdom.
This quote by James Martineau suggests that when individuals express skepticism towards their higher inspirations or feelings, it may not stem from genuine uncertainty or doubt. Instead, it may signal an unwillingness to act on or embrace these inspirations due to guilt or negligence, revealing a limited perspective and a deficiency in wise thinking. Martineau highlights the importance of acknowledging and valuing our higher callings rather than dismissing them out of fear or ignorance.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing dreams, one might say this quote to encourage reflection on true inspirations.
The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.
All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.
As I bent over the washboard and looked at my arms buried in soapsuds, I said to myself, 'What are you going to do when you grow old and your back gets stiff?' This set me to thinking, but with all my thinking I couldn't see how a poor washerwoman was going to better my condition.
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.
Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.
Books are not life, only its ashes.
Maybe the fear is that we are less than we think we are, when the actuality of it is that we are much much more.
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