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 humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.
There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
The business of education has lay[ed] the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government . . . . He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?
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