It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that being financially poor as a student can lead to a richer intellectual experience by encouraging deeper thought and reflection.
Russell Kirk's quote argues that students should prioritize contemplation over financial concerns and consumerism. He believes that the traditional student experience is compromised by the constant distractions of working and spending money, which diminishes the opportunity for intellectual growth and self-reflection. Instead, he posits that financial struggles can actually create a space conducive to more profound thinking and engagement with one's studies.
In practice
In a graduation speech highlighting the importance of reflection and personal growth.
True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.
Rather than ennobling the public mind and cementing the social fabric, applied science speedily became the chief weapon of a gross individualism, which was anathema to the frugal and righteous (John Quincy) Adams, the source of enormous fortunes divorced from duty, the instrument of unscrupulous ambition and rapacious materialism. Presently, it came to scar the very of the country which Adams loved, a disfiguring process uninterrupted since his day.
...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values.
The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights.
The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
The first ten, twelve or fifteen years of life are excavated of inherent moral worth in order to accommodate a regimen of basic training for the adult years that many of the poorest children may not even live to know.
Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.
Middle-income countries need to attend to the education of their poorest people to build their economies and ensure long-term stability.
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
I went to Goucher College in Maryland for the best possible reasons - to learn - but then I dropped out at 19 for the best possible reasons - to become a writer.
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