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.
Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.
Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful.
Reduced... to a crude formula, the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority.
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction.
By God, if women had written stories, As clerks had within here oratories, They would have written of men more wickedness Than all the mark of Adam may redress.
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