We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the obscurity of the present moment compared to our clear memories of the past and our speculative visions of the future.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote captures the complexity of human experience, highlighting how we often find clarity in our memories and conjectures, but struggle to fully comprehend the present. The 'today' is described as being 'rolled up and muffled,' suggesting that while we may be able to rationalize the past and anticipate what lies ahead, the here and now remains elusive and challenging to grasp in its entirety.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about mindfulness and the importance of living in the present.
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?
In every human society, there is an effort continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to oppose this effort and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.
I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.
Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: theyβre only animals.
We are here speaking in open disapproval of that false system of philosophy, not so long ago introduced, by which, because of an extended and unbridled desire of novelty, truth is not sought where it truly resides, and, with a disregard for the holy and apostolic traditions, other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, not approved by the Church are accepted as true, on which very vain men mistakenly think that truth itself is supported and sustained.
Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
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