Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the idea that one's inner potential is often hidden and requires external factors, like enlightenment or inspiration, to be fully realized.
Max Muller's quote reflects a profound realization about the richness of the human soul. It suggests that individuals often underestimate their inner wealth and potential. The metaphor of the sun symbolizes enlightenment or inspiration that can awaken and nurture the dormant aspects of one's character and abilities, much like how sunlight encourages plants to grow and flourish.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire personal growth and self-realization.
Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours.
Communism everywhere has paid the price of rigidity and dogmatism. Freedom has the strength of compassion and flexibility. It has, above all, the strength of intellectual honesty.
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.
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