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Literary notes about Limit (AI summary)

The word “limit” functions in literature as a multifaceted concept that can denote both physical boundaries and abstract parameters. Authors use it to demarcate moral or conceptual borders; as Schopenhauer illustrates, the sharp line separating right from wrong ([1]), while Shakespeare employs it to evoke the inexpressible bounds of emotion and fate ([2], [3]). In narrative contexts, “limit” may describe temporal confinement, such as the finite nature of time in D. H. Lawrence’s work ([4]), or spatial demarcation, from maritime liability in the Middle Ages ([5]) to the physical extent of one’s vision ([6]). It also lends a metaphorical weight to discussions of potential and aspiration, suggesting either an imposed constraint or a threshold to be surpassed—as seen when creative endeavors are portrayed as boundless ([7]) or when a person's ambitions are depicted as destined to break through conventional confines ([8]). This rich versatility reveals the term’s capacity to both restrict and define, imbuing literary works with layers of meaning regarding limitation and possibility.
  1. So sharply does the limit of right border upon that of wrong.
    — from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer
  2. Romeo is banished, There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word’s death, no words can that woe sound.
    — from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  3. Now so many woes are spent, and the same fortune still pursues them; Lord and King, what limit dost thou set to their agony?
    — from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil
  4. She would submit to it for a time, since the time had a definite limit.
    — from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
  5. By the maritime law of the Middle Ages the ship was not only the source, but the limit, of liability.
    — from The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes
  6. If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit your field of vision and shut out the world.
    — from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer
  7. Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent fresh ones without limit.
    — from What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain
  8. If the process be a fact; if things have BECOME what they are, then, he contends, we may describe no limit to man’s aspirations.
    — from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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