Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
John RuskinRead
The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.
Interpretation
Education can improve a child's life, but a lack of interest can lead to negative outcomes.
In this quote, John Ruskin emphasizes the importance of education in a child's development. He suggests that children who are eager to learn will benefit greatly from their educational experiences, while those who are disinterested may face adverse consequences in their lives, leading to a form of disgrace that can follow them into adulthood.
In practice
A teacher might use this quote to inspire students to embrace their studies.
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.
You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.
While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where real life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.
It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently...
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing, and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry.
We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.
When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves.
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