Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
Interpretation
Books allow us to access and understand the thoughts of great thinkers and leaders from the past.
In this quote, Edward Gibbon emphasizes the importance of books as valuable tools for knowledge and personal growth. He likens books to mirrors that faithfully reflect the thoughts and wisdom of great figures—sages and heroes—allowing readers to learn from their insights and experiences. This highlights the role of literature in connecting us with profound ideas and the legacy of influential individuals.
In practice
In a speech on education, one might say, 'As Gibbon noted, books are those faithful mirrors that reflect the minds of sages and heroes, shaping our understanding of the world.'
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
Education is a slow moving but powerful force
Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.
When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected; when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled.
If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.
I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.
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