A mind (that is) stretched by a new idea or experience can never shrink back to its old dimensions.
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The earliest match known to QI appeared in the September 1858 issue of “The Atlantic Monthly” of Boston, Massachusetts within a recurring column called “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior. ()
"Every man of reflection is vaguely conscious of an
imperfectly-defined circle
which is drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the
fragments of his intellectual
circle
include the curves of many other minds of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less radius.
On the other hand, when we find a portion of an arc outside of our own, we say it intersects ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that it circumscribes it.
Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
After looking at the Alps, I felt that
my mind had been stretched
beyond the limits of its elasticity,
and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/03/29/stretch/
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