What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.
I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity in academic work. It suggests that worthwhile contributions will eventually reach the right audience.
Stephen Greenblatt reflects on his decades of academic work, articulating a belief in the eventual discovery of valuable ideas by the appropriate audience. He highlights a sense of patience and dedication, trusting that commitment to quality in writing will ultimately attract those who appreciate it, regardless of the immediate size of one's audience.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference on educational philosophy, one might quote this to stress the importance of focusing on quality work rather than the size of the audience.
More from Stephen Greenblatt
All quotes →What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.
The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.
Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.
The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.
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Like our physical bodies, our memory becomes out of shape. As children, we are constantly learning new experiences, but by the time we reach our 20s, we start to lead a more sedentary life both mentally and physically. Our lives become routine, and we stop challenging our brains, and our memory starts to suffer.