In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on humanity's darker traits and foreshadows a grim future, while emphasizing the value of knowledge and literature.
Leo Rosten's quote contemplates the destructive aspects of human nature, such as malice and rage, and poses a dire question about the fate of humanity amidst these tendencies. It suggests that in the midst of darkness, there is a silent but powerful call from the knowledge contained in unwritten books, urging us to recognize and confront our flaws instead of succumbing to them.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of literature in understanding human nature, one could cite this quote to emphasize its relevance.
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.
The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberated us from ignorance and our barbarous past.
The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make a difference that you lived at all-using the talents that God has given you for the betterment of others.
If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men.
One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
We are all pencils in the hand of God.
The fate of a nation depends on the way that they eat.
There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
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