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
Elaine ScarryRead
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
Similar quotes
I want to try to do something for women in physics worldwide.
Mildred DresselhausRead
You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.
Terry PratchettRead
Literacy is so much entwined in our lives that we often fail to realize that the act of reading is a miracle that is evolving under our fingertips.
Maryanne WolfRead
I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the opportunities the library gave me.
Alan MooreRead
Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.
BonoRead
I wouldn't wish any specific thing for any specific person - it's none of my business. But the idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane. It's insane.
Mike RoweRead