We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the obscurity of the present moment compared to our clear memories of the past and our speculative visions of the future.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote captures the complexity of human experience, highlighting how we often find clarity in our memories and conjectures, but struggle to fully comprehend the present. The 'today' is described as being 'rolled up and muffled,' suggesting that while we may be able to rationalize the past and anticipate what lies ahead, the here and now remains elusive and challenging to grasp in its entirety.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about mindfulness and the importance of living in the present.
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?
Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.
I feel most alive, most electric with faith, breath, and courage, when I think of God as a current that runs through all that is. Not by will or by choice. Not as a benediction but because there are laws even God must obey.
Is this a dagger which I see before me, _x000D_ _x000D_ The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. _x000D_ _x000D_ I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. _x000D_ _x000D_ Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible _x000D_ _x000D_ To feeling as to sight? or art thou but _x000D_ _x000D_ A dagger of the mind, a false creation, _x000D_ _x000D_ Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
God speaks in the language you know best - not through your ears, but through your circumstances.
It takes so many years to learn that one is dead.
In a jump, the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera.
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