We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Read
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of selecting books wisely as they can greatly influence our inner well-being.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. highlights that books have a profound impact on our mental and emotional state. Just as medicines heal the body, the right books can nurture and heal our souls, suggesting that we should be deliberate in our choices of literature to foster personal growth and understanding.
In practice
During a book club discussion, one could invoke this quote to stress the importance of thoughtful reading.
We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.
But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.
Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.
Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.
You have little representation of young black men in the business sector, so you have children growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods who don't hear discussions at the dinner table about what goes on in business. It's almost as if we have two nations.
Iβm convinced that a world in which girls are educated is a safer, more stable, more prosperous place.
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