How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.
Elaine ScarryRead
This willingness continually to revise one's own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself to other minds (teachers) in order to increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of sky.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education is about being open to new perspectives and seeking beauty in knowledge.
Elaine Scarry emphasizes the importance of being adaptable in our understanding and perceptions as we engage with education. By allowing ourselves to be influenced by the insights of teachers and other minds, we increase our chances of discovering profound moments, akin to seeing a comet, that illuminate our path and expand our appreciation of beauty and knowledge.
Themes
EducationBeautyPerspectiveLearningTeachers
In practice
Example use cases
Opening a graduation speech with this quote highlights the ongoing journey of learning.
More from Elaine Scarry
All quotes →Beauty always takes place in the particular, and if there are no particulars, the chances of seeing it go down
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When we come upon beautiful things they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.
Elaine ScarryRead
Permitted to inhabit neither the realm of the ideal nor the realm of the real, to be neither aspiration nor companion, beauty comes to us like a fugitive bird unable to fly, unable to land.
Elaine ScarryRead
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