We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing,this seeing. -Aunt Beast
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the difference between perception and reality, suggesting that our understanding is often limited by our sight.
Aunt Beast's words highlight the distinction between superficial appearances and deeper truths. The act of seeing can confine us to a narrow view of the world, preventing us from perceiving the full essence of things, which requires deeper understanding and insight beyond mere visual observation.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion, one might use this quote to illustrate the concept of subjective reality.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.
Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles, I'd house all the poor scholars and make them beam with smiles
The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.
The fight is no longer between the classes or between rich and poor but between the idiots and the eco-conscious.
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man.
Live simply, so that all may simply live.
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