We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeRead
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
Interpretation
Studying the Bible deeply enhances a writer's style and prevents vulgarity.
Coleridge suggests that a thorough examination of the Bible can refine a writer's style, ensuring that their work remains dignified and free from vulgarity. The implication is that the moral and spiritual insights gained from such study can elevate language and expressivity, helping writers to create more profound and impactful literature.
In practice
A public speaker could use this quote to emphasize the importance of eloquence in communication.
We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Often do the spirits stride on before the event; and in today already walks tomorrow.
Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not embracing the whole truth.
To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.
A Brahmin is not so much in need of education as a Chandala. If the son of a Brahmin needs one teacher, that of a Chandala needs ten.
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed.
To become comfortable with uncertainty is one of the primary goals in the training of a physician.
Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.
To read great books does not mean one becomes βbookishβ; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.