We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Interpretation
We must immerse ourselves in different perspectives and experiences to truly learn and understand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that in order to gain true knowledge and understanding from what we read, we need to fully engage with the diverse characters, cultures, and experiences presented in literature. By embodying the roles of various historical and fictional figures, we create connections between their realities and our personal experiences, thus enhancing our learning and comprehension.
In practice
In a book club discussion, this quote can highlight the importance of empathizing with various characters to deepen understanding.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.
Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
If the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent.
The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it.
It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils.
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