The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.
George SteinerRead
To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Stories and poetry are essential for a child's development; depriving them of these experiences stifles their growth.
In this quote, George Steiner emphasizes the vital role that storytelling and poetry play in a child's life. He suggests that to withhold these forms of expression and imagination from a child is akin to burying them alive, as it deprives them of the richness and vibrancy that literature offers, leading to a sense of emptiness and stunted emotional and intellectual growth.
Themes
StorytellingPoetryEducationChild DevelopmentImagination
In practice
Example use cases
During a parent-teacher meeting, a teacher could quote this to emphasize the importance of reading to children at home.
More from George Steiner
All quotes →Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.
George SteinerRead
I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.
George SteinerRead
It took 10 months for me to learn to tie a lace; I must have howled with rage and frustration. But one day I could tie my laces. That no one can take from you. I profoundly distrust the pedagogy of ease.
George SteinerRead
The letter kills the spirit. The written text is mute in the face of responding challenge. It does not admit of inward growth and correction. Text subverts the absolutely vital role of memory.
George SteinerRead
Books are in no hurry. An act of creation is in no hurry; it reads us, it privileges us infinitely. The notion that it is the occasion for our cleverness fills me with baffled bitterness and anger.
George SteinerRead
Similar quotes
A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.
Umberto EcoRead
If you are open-minded and ready to learn, there are many things which you can learn not only from books and instructors but from the very life experience itself.
Haile SelassieRead
It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.
Mark TwainRead
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
Joshua CohenRead
There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.
Sonia SotomayorRead
Until, modern times when it became mostly a civic task, education was considered a sacred work. It was sacred because it involved the indwelling spirit in the student and because it required an awakened spirit in the teachers. Spirit to spirit, genius to genius, soul to soul go the true lessons that help young people become themselves. Ultimately, each person holds the key to the story trying to be lived from within, but first someone else must help unlock the mystery of one’s life.
Michael MeadeRead