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.
- 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 - 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 - 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 - She would submit to it for a time, since the time had a definite limit.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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