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?
At times I feel myself overtaken by an immense tenderness for these people around me who live in the same century.
None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
We know that we cannot live together without rules which tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is permitted and what is prohibited. We know that it is law which enables men to live together, that creates order out of chaos. We know that law is the glue that holds civilization together.
She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.
A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern.
When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.
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