Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.
Interpretation
Language and literature connect us to our history and identity.
This quote emphasizes the significance of language and literature as vessels of historical knowledge and personal identity. To understand ourselves fully, we must explore our past, as our stories and the words we use shape our perception of who we are today. The connection to our history through literature anchors us, allowing us to better navigate our present and future.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of preserving cultural literature.
Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.
Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses—the imagination’s vision, & the imagination’s hearing—& the moral sense, & the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks & exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else.
To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.
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