One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
Clifton FadimanRead
To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key.
Interpretation
Reading in bed creates a private escape into our imaginations.
Clifton Fadiman's quote highlights the intimate and personal experience of reading in bed, likening it to a retreat into a private world of imagination. It suggests that through reading, we can reclaim the joy and comfort we experienced as children, allowing ourselves to rediscover the hidden pleasures that lie in the stories we immerse ourselves in, away from the noise of the outside world.
In practice
In a book club discussion about intimate reading experiences.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
My modus operandi hasn't really changed that much from when I was an English teacher. I wanted my students to leave my classroom loving reading and wanting to read more, and if they left my classroom thinking that reading is boring, then I haven't done my job.
One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.
He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.
I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.
What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.
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