Literature is an investment of genius which pays dividends to all subsequent times.
Interpretation
Literature enriches future generations by preserving profound ideas and creativity.
This quote by John Burroughs conveys the idea that great literary works are a powerful investment of intellectual and creative effort. Such works continue to benefit future generations, imparting wisdom, inspiration, and insight, thereby allowing society to learn from the past and cultivate new ideas.
In practice
During a literary festival, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of literature in shaping society.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.
The language of my books has shaped me as a man.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
My books never go where I think they're going.
I write adult fiction, but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.