We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
Interpretation
Books are valued by those who possess wisdom, and the wisest individuals cherish them the most.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the special relationship between wisdom and the appreciation of books. It suggests that the pursuit of knowledge and understanding through reading is both a hallmark of wisdom and a means to cultivate it. Those who are wise recognize the value of books not just as sources of information, but as tools for personal growth and enlightenment.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, one might quote Emerson to emphasize how wise individuals value learning.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
...the source of all great mathematics is the special case, the concrete example. It is frequent in mathematics that every instance of a concept of seemingly generality is, in essence, the same as a small and concrete special case.
Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.
The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.
The students that, like the wild animal being prepared for its tricks in the circus called 'life', expects only training as sketched above, will be severely disappointed: by his standards he will learn next to nothing.
It is of no use to commit whole pages to memory, merely to recite them once without hesitation; you must think of the meaning more than the words - of the ideas more than the language.
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