You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Interpretation
The essence of poetry is lost in translation, unlike scientific texts that can be accurately translated.
Samuel Johnson expresses the idea that while the factual content of science can be translated with precision, the emotional and aesthetic qualities found in poetry are intimately tied to the original language. Therefore, the beauty and nuances of poetic expression are often diminished or transformed in translation, making it impossible to fully convey the original intent and feel.
In practice
This quote would be perfect for a discussion on the challenges of translating literary works in a literature class.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.
It perhaps might be said--if any one dared--that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.
I am not going to get into it myself, except to say (1) if I am writing "boy fiction," who are all those boys with breasts who keep turning up by the hundreds at my signings and readings? and (2) thank you, geek girls! I love you all.
Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love.
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