The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. The simplicity of nature is not that which may be easily read but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that nature's simplicity is profound and complex, unlike the straightforwardness of machinery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the inherent complexity and depth of the universe and nature, suggesting that what appears simple at first glance is often layered with intricate meanings that cannot be fully grasped or analyzed like a machine. The idea conveys that understanding nature requires more than just superficial observation; it involves recognizing its endless, unattainable mysteries.
In practice
Using the quote during a nature documentary to highlight the complexity of ecosystems.
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?
Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.
Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.
When a man sees something desirable, he must reflect on the fact that with time it could come to involve what is detestable. When he sees something that is beneficial, he should reflect that sooner or later it, too, could come to involve harm.
Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them.
War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
Freedom always deals with 'the possible'; this gives freedom its great flexibility, its fascination, and its dangers.
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