The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. The simplicity of nature is not that which may be easily read but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that nature's simplicity is profound and complex, unlike the straightforwardness of machinery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote reflects on the inherent complexity and depth of the universe and nature, suggesting that what appears simple at first glance is often layered with intricate meanings that cannot be fully grasped or analyzed like a machine. The idea conveys that understanding nature requires more than just superficial observation; it involves recognizing its endless, unattainable mysteries.
In practice
Using the quote during a nature documentary to highlight the complexity of ecosystems.
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?
These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses. It is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practising, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.
We always strive after what is forbidden, and desire the things refused us.
... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the New World Order and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.
The human body is vapor materialized by sunshine mixed with the life of the stars.
Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.
I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.
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