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.
Mortimer AdlerRead
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
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
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Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
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There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.
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The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.
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