The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that children perceive the world with more openness and wonder than adults.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote suggests that children have a unique ability to appreciate and internalize the beauty and truth of the world around them. While adults may see only what is in front of their eyes, children engage with their surroundings on a deeper emotional level, allowing the light of the sun to touch not just their sight but also their hearts. This highlights the importance of maintaining a sense of wonder and emotional connection to the world as one grows older.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of childlike wonder in education.
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?
Never let yourself think that because God has given you many things to do for Himpressing routine jobs, a life full up with duties and demands of a very practical sort---that all these need separate you from communion with Him. God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament; however unexpected its outward form may be receive Him in every sight and sound, joy, pain, opportunity and sacrifice.
I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn't think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was othersβ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.
To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
The only security lies in individual, personal honesty, The law cannot make people honest.
Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It's deliberate.
He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.
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