Your minds may now be likened to a garden, which will, if neglected, yield only weeds and thistles; but, if cultivated, will produce the most beautiful flowers, and the most delicious fruits.
Interpretation
The mind requires nurture and care to flourish, just like a garden requires cultivation to produce beauty and bounty.
This quote emphasizes the importance of actively nurturing and cultivating one's mind. Just as a neglected garden becomes overrun with weeds, a mind that is not cared for will yield negative thoughts and unproductive habits. Conversely, with attention and effort, a cultivated mind can lead to beautiful ideas and fruitful outcomes.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development.
Steady, firm, and kind government of prisoners is the truest humanity and the best exercise of duty. It is with convicts as with children: unseasonable indulgence, indiscreetly granted, leads to mischiefs which we may deplore but cannot repair.
I was early taught by sorrow to shed tears, and now when sudden joy lights up, or any unexpected sorrow strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling tide of feeling.
I shall be well enough when I get to Kentucky or Alabama. The tonic I need is the tonic of opposition. That always sets me on my feet.
Time passed solely in the pursuit of pleasure leaves no solid enjoyment for the future; but from the hours you spend in reading and studying useful books, you will gather a golden harvest in future years.
With care and patience, people may accomplish things which, to an indolent person, would appear impossible.
My wish is to be known only thru my work.
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
Effort within the mind further limits the mind, because effort implies struggle towards a goal and when you have a goal, a purpose, an end in view, you have placed a limit on the mind.
Dad had a way of disarming people because he never really directly attacked them. He might attack a principle, but he never attacked the individual.
Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.
Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.
Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.
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