Literary notes about Potential (AI summary)
In literature, the term “potential” is deployed to evoke latent capacity or unrealized possibility, serving as a bridge between what is actual and what might be. Its usage can be scientific, as when a force like gravity is invoked to explain how energy lies dormant in a stone ([1]), or it can be metaphorical, suggesting unrealized virtues and capabilities within individuals or collectives ([2], [3]). The word also appears in stylistic narratives to contrast kinetic action with stalled promise, as in the depiction of a character’s transformative possibilities ([4], [5]). Often, “potential” underlines the tension between mere existence and the transformative energy waiting to be activated, thereby deepening the reader’s understanding of both physical phenomena and the human condition ([6], [7]).
- Thus the potential energy of the stone is commonly said to be due to the 'force' of gravity which is continually operating upon it.
— from The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century by Thomas Henry Huxley - Nothing must be actual in either friend that is not potential in the other.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - I perceive potential saints in America and Europe, waiting to be awakened.'
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda - He preferred himself to see another’s face and listen to another’s words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament relieved.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - He lost the accumulated weariness of business—worry and expansive oratory; he felt young and potential.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - Thought is nature represented; it is potential energy producing life and becoming an actual appearance.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - As soon as his potential powers of mind begin to function, imagination, more powerful than all the rest, awakes, and precedes all the rest.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
