In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
Mortimer AdlerRead
Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature entertains us before it educates us, and while beauty moves us, understanding it can be complex.
In this quote, Mortimer Adler expresses the idea that imaginative literature captivates our senses and emotions primarily through pleasure, rather than through direct teaching. He suggests that while it is effortless to enjoy literature, comprehending the reasons behind that enjoyment is challenging, indicating that the beauty found in literature often eludes straightforward analysis compared to truth, making it a nuanced experience.
Themes
LiteratureBeautyPleasureUnderstandingTruth
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion, one might use this quote to emphasize the emotional impact of storytelling.
More from Mortimer Adler
All quotes →The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts.
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A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser.
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If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.
Mortimer AdlerRead
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.
Mortimer AdlerRead
If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
Mortimer AdlerRead
Similar quotes
People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.
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The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice.
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There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.
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I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.
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In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.
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If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
William Makepeace ThackerayRead