Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John KeatsRead
I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
Interpretation
The quote expresses gratitude for the ability to understand complex literature.
In this quote, John Keats reflects on the profound sense of contentment he feels from being able to read and comprehend the works of Shakespeare deeply. This appreciation for literature not only showcases the beauty of language but also highlights the joy and fulfillment that comes from engaging with art and its layered meanings.
In practice
In a literary discussion, one might say, 'As Keats once stated, I have good reason to be content, as understanding Shakespeare brings joy to my heart.'
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?
Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it β make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me βwrite the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably
I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.
...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.
My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, βAll Southern literature can be summed up in these words: βOn the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.ββ She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasnβt easy.
I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering.
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
To whom do I give my new elegant little book? Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed
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