You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that our imagination can control our thoughts and actions, binding us to our own perceptions and dreams.
F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that our imagination can have a powerful hold over us, restricting our freedom and shaping our reality. It implies that while our imagination allows for creativity and potential, it can also become a slave master, dictating our emotions, decisions, and ultimately, our way of life. This duality highlights the significant role our inner thoughts play in determining our experiences and how we navigate the world.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage creativity in the workplace.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.
It has been said: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. It is more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing up is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole-part relationship is meaningful.
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
Instead of loaves of bread, many times God gives out handfuls of purpose.
When there is no mind, you are in yoga; when there is mind you are not in yoga. So you may do all the postures, but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in yoga. Yoga is the state of no-mind. If you can be without the mind without doing any posture, you have become a perfect yogi. It has happened to many without doing any postures, and it has not happened to many who have been doing postures for many lives.
The same kinds of stereotypes and hunches that George Zimmerman used when deciding that, you know, Trayvon Martin seemed like a threat in his neighborhood, law enforcement officers employ all the time.
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