There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
Dorothy ParkerRead
Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and books that keep coming out and coming out and coming out, shoals of them, spates of them, flash floods of them, too blame many books, and no sign of an end.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the overwhelming nature of the vast amount of literature and information available, suggesting a struggle to keep pace.
Dorothy Parker highlights the daunting challenge of navigating the endless flood of books and knowledge that continues to grow. The imagery of 'shoals' and 'flash floods' suggests a relentless surge that can be both inspiring and overwhelming, pointing to a common experience among readers and scholars who feel inundated by the sheer volume of information and literature that is continuously produced.
In practice
In a discussion about modern literature, one could cite this quote to express the challenges of staying up-to-date.
There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
My land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges.
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.
They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.
It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.
Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.
I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.
I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly - and with very little financial encouragement - saving lives and minds. I can’t think of a more efficient, hopeful or egalitarian machine, with the possible exception of the bicycle.
I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'
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