Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.
Interpretation
Books gain their significance from the history and respect they have earned over time.
This quote emphasizes the idea that the true worth of books, similar to proverbs, comes not just from their content but from the legacy and reverence they accumulate throughout history. It suggests that the value of literature is deeply intertwined with the cultural context and the appreciation it receives over generations.
In practice
During a book club meeting, discussing the lasting impact of classic literature.
Today's dissenters mainly focus their attention and expend their energies on the most inconsequential of trivia. ...Allegedly serious intellectuals quibble endlessly over such ridiculous trivialities...In the meantime, the public is lulled into a perilous somnolence, spoon-fed pap, and palpable untruths, many of which are turned out by special-interest and pressure groups and well organized propaganda machines.
You must not only learn to live with tension, you must seek it out. You must learn to thrive on stress.
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
The #1 guideline to success is you must be in business for yourself. When you work for someone else, you sell your time at wholesale to your employer, who then re-sells it at retail to the customer.
Patience; this is the greatest business asset. Wait for the right time to make your moves.
There is only one way to make a great deal of money; and that is in a business of your own.
As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren't looking for.
People often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes character.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.
The teacher can seldom afford to miss the questions: What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition? The student should consider the principal parts of the problem attentively, repeatedly, and from from various sides.
If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history, we're teaching kids that they are divided into tribes. And we're failing to teach them that we also, as human beings, share problems that we need to work together with.
You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught.
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