In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.
Interpretation
Emerson suggests that the imaginative quality of literature is often diminished when scholars are disconnected from the raw experiences of youth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson reflects on the impact of childhood experiences on the appreciation of literature. He argues that scholars, in their pursuit of knowledge, may lose touch with the more visceral and imaginative aspects of life that can enrich their understanding of literature. The 'ruder companions' of youth offer a richness to life that contributes to a deeper, more spiritual appreciation of literary works, contrasting with the often structured and formal education of scholars.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of experiential learning, this quote serves to illustrate how childhood encounters shape our understanding of art.
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?
The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.
I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life...The Bible...should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.
To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.
Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.
Specialized management courses are useful but should come well after the complexity of management and business are understood.
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