Of how little value is a ship standing helpless on the stocks--but half-built, and yet building--to one who has no knowledge of the ocean, or of what that helpless hulk will become the moment she slides into her element, and rises and falls upon the flood with joyous greeting!
This quote illustrates the potential of something unfinished, emphasizing the importance of vision and knowledge in recognizing value.
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More from Henry Ward Beecher
And if by an insane blindness you shall contrive to put off the issue, and send this unsettled dispute down to your children, it will go down, gathering volume and strength at every step, to waste and desolate their heritage.
Northern ideas must become American, or Southern ideas must become American, before there will be peace.
These are symptoms only, not the disease; the effects, not the causes.
If the South shall give to the country a policy derived from her heathen notions of men, there will be such a peace as men have overdrugged with opium, that deep lethargy just before the mortal convulsions and death!